
Mr M& Pi 

GopightN 



COPYRIGirr DEPOSIT. 



POEMS BY 
EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN 



POEMS 



BY 

EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN 

AUTHOR OF IN A NEW CENTURY, COUSIN ANTHONY AND I, 

"WINDFALLS OF observation" 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

MCMXIV 



Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribners Sons 
Published September, 1914 




.SEP 23 1914 

©CI.A380521 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH 1 

PROCUL NEGOTIIS 3 

FUIT ILIUM 4 

EPITHALAMIUM 6 

MEA CULPA 10 

AGAIN 14 

SNOW-BOUND 16 

TO MABEL 18 

IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 21 

A SECOND THOUGHT 23 

A PRACTICAL QUESTION 25 

ET TU, BERGHE ! 26 

INSOMNIA 27 

CIVIL SERVICE 28 

ALL OR NOTHING 30 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A PHILADELPHIA CLAVERHOUSE 32 

THROWING STONES 34 

TOUCHING BOTTOM 38 

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE 40 

LOCHINVAR EX-COLORADO 43 

A MORTIFYING SUBJECT 46 

MIXED 48 

AND WAS HE RIGHT ? 49 

BALLADE OF THE GENERAL TERM 50 

INFIRM 52 

CRUMBS AND COMFORT 53 

ASHORE 54 

BARTER 57 

BEGGARS' HORSES 59 

TO-DAY 61 

OF MISTRESS MARTHA: HER EYES 62 

THE BEST GIFT OF ALL 64 

AUTUMN 66 

REMORSE 68 

vi 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

HUMPTY DUMPTY 69 

RETIREMENT 70 

SELF-SACRIFICE 72 

WHAT HE WANTS IN HIS 73 

BE KIND TO THYSELF 74 

LOST LIGHT 75 

DATED "FEBRUARY THE 14th" 77 

LOOKINGON 79 

REVULSION 80 

FOLGER 82 

GRANT " 83 

POEMS AND VERSES 

THE SEA IS HIS 87 

WORK 91 

WORTH WHILE 95 

EGOTISM 96 

BROTHERHOOD 97 

WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 99 

vii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LINES INSCRIBED ON A HOSPITAL CLOCK 101 

A GIRL OF POMPEII 102 

GIFTS 103 

CHRISTMAS, 1898 104 

CHRISTMAS, 1900 106 

new year's, 1900 108 

AUGUST 109 

BY THE EVENING FIRE 110 

THE CHRISTMAS LOVER 111 

LABUNTUR ANNI 112 

TO CELESTINE IN BRAVE ARRAY 114 

AS SUMMER WANES 115 

IRRECONCILABLE 116 

THEY SAY SHE FLIRTS 117 

BLANDINA 120 

AN URBAN HARBINGER 122 

THE CONTEMPORARY SUITOR 124 

UNCERTAINTY 126 

ABOUT THE HORSE 128 

viii 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
THE REVOLT OF THE BONE 130 

SPRING FEVER 132 

EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 134 



VERSES OF OCCASION 

RETROSPECTIVELY SPEAKING 151 

LIFE LOQUITUR 155 

LIFE TO HIS FRIENDS 160 

AD SODALES 163 

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER 170 

FIFTY YEARS OLD 173 
THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, AND THE GLORY 176 

THE STRENUOUS LIFE 182 

WHAT FOR? 189 

TO PRESIDENT LOWELL 191 

THE OLD STOCK 194 

THIRTY YEARS AGO 197 

THE PRUDENT FARMER 201 

ix 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

THE AUTOMOBILE SPEAKS 205 

FORTITER OCCUPA PORTUM 208 

CHRISTMAS, 1912 211 

TO AN AMBASSADOR 214 



POEMS BY 
EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN 



A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH 

TO put new shingles on old roofs; 
To give old women wadded skirts; 
To treat premonitory coughs 

With seasonable flannel shirts; 
To soothe the stings of poverty 

And keep the jackal from the door — 
These are the works that occupy 
The Little Sister of the Poor. 

She carries, everywhere she goes, 

Kind words and chickens, jams and coals; 
Poultices for corporeal woes, 

And sympathy for downcast souls; 
Her currant jelly — her quinine, 

The lips of fever move to bless. 
She makes the humble sick-room shine 

With unaccustomed tidiness. 

A heart of hers the instant twin 

And vivid counterpart is mine; 
I also serve my fellow men, 

Though in a somewhat different line. 

1 



A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH 

The Poor, and their concerns, she has 

Monopolized, because of which 
It falls to me to labor as 

A Little Brother of the Rich. 

For their sake at no sacrifice 

Does my devoted spirit quail; 
I give their horses exercise; 

As ballast on their yachts I sail. 
Upon their Tally Hos I ride 

And brave the chances of a storm; 
I even use my own inside 

To keep their wines and victuals warm. 

Those whom we strive to benefit 

Dear to our hearts soon grow to be; 
I love my Rich, and I admit 

That they are very good to me. 
Succor the Poor, my sisters, I, 

While heaven shall still vouchsafe me health, 
Will strive to share and mollify 

The trials of abounding wealth. 



PROCUL NEGOTIIS 

I THINK that if I had a farm, 
I 'd be a man of sense; 
And if the day was bright and warm 

I 'd sit upon the fence, 
And calmly smoke a pensive pipe 

And think about my pigs; 
And wonder if the corn was ripe; 
And counsel Vhomme qui digs. 

And if the day was wet and cold, 

I think I should admire 
To sit, and dawdle over old 

Montaigne, before the fire; 
And pity boobies who could lie 

And squabble just for pelf; 
And thank my blessed stars that I 

Was nicely fixed myself. 



FUIT ILIUM 

WERE you nurtured in the purple ? 
Were you reared a pampered pet ? 
Did a menial throng encircle 

You in waiting while you ate ? 
When a baby had you lockets, 

Silver cups, and forks, and spoons? 
Were there coins in the pockets 
Of your childhood's pantaloons ? 

Did hereditary shekels 

Make your sweethearts deem you fair — 
Reconcile them to your freckles 

And your carrot-colored hair? 
In electrifying raiment 

Were you every day attired ? 
Was the promptness of your payment 

Universally admired? 

Did your father, too confiding, 

Sign the paper of his friends ? 
Did his railway stock, subsiding, 

Cease to pay him dividends ? 
4 



FUIT ILIUM 

Are his buildings slow in renting? 

Did his banker pilfer, slope, 
And absconding leave lamenting 

Creditors to live on hope? 

Ere you dissipate a quarter 
Do you scrutinize it twice? 

Have you ceased to look on water- 
Drinking as a nauseous vice? 

Do you wear your brother's breeches, 
Though the buttons scarcely meet? 

Does the vanity of riches 

Form no part of your conceit? 

I am with you, fellow pauper ! 

Let us share our scanty crust — 
Burst the bonds of fiscal torpor — 

Go where beer is sold on trust ! 
Let us, freed from res angustce, 

Seek some fair Utopian mead 
Where the throat is never dusty, 

And tobacco grows, a weed. 



EPITHALAMIUM 

HPHE marriage bells have rung their peal, 
A The wedding march has told its story. 
I 've seen her at the altar kneel 

In all her stainless, virgin glory; 
She 's bound to honor, love, obey, 

Come joy or sorrow, tears or laughter. 
I watched her as she rode away, 

And flung the lucky slipper after. 

She was my first, my very first, 

My earliest inamorata, 
And to the passion that I nursed 

For her I well-nigh was a martyr. 
For I was young and she was fair, 

And always bright and gay and chipper, 
And, oh, she wore such sunlit hair ! 

Such silken stockings ! such a slipper ! 

She did not wish to make me mourn — 
She was the kindest of God's creatures; 

But flirting was in her inborn, 
Like brains and queerness in the Beechers. 
6 



i 



EPITHALAMIUM 

I do not fear your heartless flirt, 

Obtuse her dart and dull her probe is; 

But when girls do not mean to hurt, 
But do — Orate tunc pro nobis ! 

A most romantic country place; 

The moon at full, the month of August; 
An inland lake across whose face 

Played gentle zephyrs, ne'er a raw gust. 
Books, boats, and horses to enjoy, 

The which was all our occupation; 
A damsel and a callow boy — 

There ! now you have the situation. 

We rode together miles and miles, 

My pupil she, and I her Chiron; 
At home I revelled in her smiles 

And read her extracts out of Byron. 
We roamed by moonlight, chose our stars 

(I thought it most authentic billing), 
Explored the woods, climbed over bars, 

Smoked cigarettes and broke a shilling. 

An infinitely blissful week 

Went by in this Arcadian fashion; 

7 



EPITHALAMIUM 

I hesitated long to speak, 

But ultimately breathed my passion. 
She said her heart was not her own; 

She said she 'd love me like a sister; 
She cried a little (not alone), 

I begged her not to fret, and — kissed her. 

I lost some sleep, some pounds in weight, 

A deal of time and all my spirits, 
And much, how much I dare not state 

I mused upon that damsel's merits. 
I tortured my unhappy soul, 

I wished I never might recover; 
I hoped her marriage bells might toll 

A requiem for her faithful lover. 

And now she 's married, now she wears 

A wedding-ring upon her finger; 
And I — although it odd appears — 

Still in the flesh I seem to linger. 
Lo, there my swallow-tail, and here 

Lies by my side a wedding favor; 
Beside it stands a mug of beer, 

I taste it — how divine its flavor ! 
8 



EPITHALAMIUM 

I saw her in her bridal dress 

Stand pure and lovely at the altar; 
I heard her firm response — that "Yes," 

Without a quiver or a falter. 
And here I sit and drink to her 

Long life and happiness, God bless her ! 
Now fill again. No heel-taps, sir; 

Here 's to — Success to her successor ! 



MEA CULPA 

T^HERE is a thing which in my brain, 

* Though nightly I revolve it, 
I cannot in the least explain, 

Nor do I hope to solve it. 
While others tread the narrow path 

In manner meek and pious, 
Why is it that my spirit hath 

So opposite a bias ? 

Brought up to fear the Lord, and dread 

The bottomless abysm, 
In Watts's hymns profoundly read 

And drilled in catechism, 
I should have been a model youth, 

The pink of all that 's proper. 
I was not, but — to tell the truth — 

I never cared a copper. 

I had no yearnings when a boy 
To sport an angel's wrapper, 

Nor heard I with tumultuous joy 
The church-frequenting clapper. 
10 



MEA CULPA 

My actions always harmonized 
With my own sweet volition. 

I always did what I devised, 
But rarely asked permission. 

When o'er the holy book I 'd pore 

And read of doings pristine, 
I had a fellow-feeling for 

The put-upon Philistine. 
King David gratified my taste — 

He harped and danced boleros; 
But first the Prodigal was placed 

Upon my list of heroes. 

I went to school. To study ? No ! 

I dearly loved to dally 
And dawdle over Ivanhoe, 

Tom Brown, and Charles O'Malley; 
In recitation I was used 

To halt on every sentence; 
Repenting, seldom I produced 

Fruits proper to repentance. 

At college, later, I became 
Familiar with my Flaccus, 
11 



MEA CULPA 

Brought incense to the Muses' flame, 

And sacrificed to Bacchus. 
I flourished in an air unfraught 

With sanctity's aroma; 
Learned many things I was not taught, 

And captured a diploma. 

I am not well provided for, 

I have no great possessions, 
I do not like the legal or 

Medicinal professions, 
Were I of good repute I might 

Take orders as a deacon; 
But I 'm no bright and shining light, 

But just a warning beacon. 

Though often urged by friends sincere 

To woo some funded houri, 
I cannot read my title clear 

To any damsel's dowry. 
And could to wedlock I induce 

An heiress, I should falter, 
For fear that such a bridal noose 

Might prove a gilded halter. 
12 



MEA CULPA 

My tradesmen have suspicious grown, 

My friends are tired of giving; 
Upon the cold, cold world I 'm thrown 

To hammer out my living. 
I fear that work before me lies — 

Indeed, I see no option, 
Unless, perhaps, I advertise — 

"An orphan for adoption!" 

A legacy of misspent time 

Is all that I 'm the heir to; 
I cannot make my life sublime 

However much I care to. 
And if as now I turn my head 

In retrospect a minute, 
'Tis but to recognize my bed, 

Before I lie down in it. 

I am the man that I have been, 

And at the final summing, 
How shall I bear to see sent in 

My score, — one long shortcoming ! 
Unless when all the saints exclaim 

With righteous wrath, "Peccavit!" 
Some mighty friend shall make his claim, 

"He suffered, and — amavit!" 
13 



AGAIN 

[ WONDER why my brow is burning; 
*- Why sleep to close my eyes forgets; 
I wonder why I have a yearning 

To smoke incessant cigarettes. 
I wonder why my thoughts will wander, 

And all restraint of mine defy, 
And why — excuse the rhyme — a gander 

Is not more of a goose than I. 

I have an indistinct impression 

I had these symptoms once before, 
And dull discomfort held possession 

Of this same spot that now is sore. 
That sometime in a past that ranges 

From early whiskers up to bibs, 
My heart was ringing just such changes 

As now against these selfsame ribs. 

I wish some philanthropic Jenner 
Might vaccinate against these ills, 

And help us keep our noiseless tenor 
Of life submissive to our wills; 
14 



AGAIN 

And ere our hearts are permeated 
By sentiments too warm by half, 

That we might be inoculated 
With milder passion from a calf. 



15 



SNOW-BOUND 

A law office; two briefless ones; a clock strikes. 
JAMES 

/^vNE, two, three, four; it 's four o'clock. 
^^ There comes the postman round the block, 
And in a jiff we '11 hear his knock 

Most pleasant. 
Inform me, Thomas, will he bring 
To you deserving no such thing 
Letters from her whose praises ring 

Incessant ? 

THOMAS 

Friend of my bosom, James, refrain 
From putting questions fraught with pain, 
And seeking facts I had not fain 

Imparted. 
The said official on this stretch, 
Will not, in my opinion, fetch, 
Such documents to me, a wretch 

Down-hearted. 
16 



SNOW-BOUND 

JAMES 

Nay; but I prithee, Thomas, tell 

To me, thy friend, who loves thee well, 

What cause there is for such a fell 

Deprival, 
Why is it that the message fails ? 
Have broken ties, or twisted rails, 
Or storm, or snow delayed the mail's 

Arrival ? 

THOMAS 

Thou art, oh, James ! a friend indeed, 
To probe my wound and make it bleed; 
To know of my affairs thy greed 

Hath no bound. 
The reason why, thou hast not guessed, 
If storm there were, 'twas in her breast, 
For there my letter, unexpressed, 

Lies snow-bound. 



17 



TO MABEL 

UPON this anniversary, 
My little godchild, aged three, 
My compliments I make to thee, 

Quite heedless. 
And that you '11 throw them now away, 
But treasure them some future day, 
Are platitudes, the which to say 
Is needless. 

You small, stout damsel, muckle mou'd, 
With cropped tow-head and manners rude, 
And stormy spirit unsubdued 

By nurses, 
Where you were raised was it in vogue 
To lisp that Tipperary brogue ? 
Oh, you 're a subject sweet, you rogue, 

For verses ! 

Last Sunday morning when we stayed 
At home you got yourself arrayed 
In Lyman's clothes and turned from maid 
To urchin. 

18 



TO MABEL 

And when we all laughed at you so, 
You eyed outside the falling snow, 
And thought your rig quite fit to go 
To church in. 

Play on, play on, dear little lass ! 
Play on till sixteen summers pass, 
And then I '11 bring a looking-glass, 

And there be- 
Fore you on your lips I '11 show 
The curves of small Dan Cupid's bow, 
And then the crop that now is "tow" 

Shall "fair" be. 

And then I '11 show you, too, the charms 
Of small firm hands and rounded arms, 
And eyes whose flashes send alarms 

Right through you; 
And then a half -regretful sigh 
May break from me to think that I, 
At forty years, can never try, 

To woo you. 

What shall I wish you ? Free from ruth, 
To live and learn in love and truth, 
19 



TO MABEL 

Through childhood's day and days of youth, 

And school's day. 
For all the days that intervene 
'Twixt Mab at three and at nineteen, 
Are but one sombre or serene 

All Fools' Day. 



20 



IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 

WHAT ? You here ! Why, old man, I never 
Felt more surprise or more delight; 
Who would have dreamt that you would ever 

Parade around in robes of white ? 
I always thought of you as dodging 

The coals and firebrands somewhere else; 
And here you are, with board and lodging, 
Where not so much as butter melts. 

Well, well, old man, if you can stand it 

Up here, I '11 never make a fuss; 
I had forebodings that they 'd planned it 

A little stiff for men like us. 
The boys were much cut up about you, 

You got away so very quick; 
And, as for me, to do without you 

Just absolutely made me sick. 

I wish you could have seen us plant you; 

Why, every man squeezed out a tear, 
And — just imagine us, now, can't you ? — 

The gang, and yours the only bier ! 
21 



IN THE ELYSIAN FIELDS 

Fred hammered out some bully verses; 

We had them printed in the sheet, 
With lines funereal as hearses 

Around them — didn't it look sweet ! 

Halloo ! is that Sir W T alter Raleigh ? — 

I wish you 'd point the people out; 
I want to look at Tom Macaulay; 

Is Makepeace anywhere about? 
Where 's Socrates ? WTiere 's Sydney Carton ? 

Oh, I forgot he was a myth; 
If there 's a thing I 've set my heart on 

It is to play with Sydney Smith. 

What? Glad I came? I am for certain; 

The other 's a malarious hole. 
I always pined to draw the curtain, 

And somehow knew I had a soul. 
The flesh — oh, wasn't it a fetter ! 

You 'd get so tired of all your schemes; 
But here, I think, I '11 like it better. 

Oh dear, how natural it seems ! 



22 



A SECOND THOUGHT 

THIS world 's the worst I ever saw; 
I 'd like to make it better; 
I 'm going to promulgate the law, 
And hold men to its letter. 
Be respectable and stand 

Esteemed of Mrs. Grundy; 
Attend to business week-days and 
Read moral books on Sunday. 

On Sabbath-keepers, every one, 

Approvingly I smile, and 
Frown on those who spend their Sun- 
Days down at Coney Island. 

Don't play cards, young man; gobang 

Affords amusement ample. 
Speak carefully, eschewing slang, 
And set a good example. 

The theatres, how bad they be ! 

The players, oh, how vicious ! 
The waltz I shudder when I see, 

And think it most pernicious. 
23 



A SECOND THOUGHT 

Shun the wine cup; don't be led 
To drink by scoff or banter; 

In the cup lurk pains of head, 
And snakes in the decanter. 

Ah, me ! I wonder if I 'm right ! 
I say, "It 's wrong to do so !" 
As though, without a soul in sight, 
I ruled alone, like Crusoe. 

Is it that I am partly wrong, 

And partly right, my neighbor, 
And that we get, who toil so long, 
Half -truths for all our labor? 



24 



A PRACTICAL QUESTION 

l^v ARKLY the humorist 
*—^ Muses on fate; 
Ghastly experiment 

Life seems to him, 
Subject for merriment 

Sombre and grim; 
Is it his doom or is 't 

Something he ate ? 



25 



ET TU, BERGHE! 

A ND art thou, Bergh, so firmly set 
•** Against domestic strife, 
As to correct with stripes the man 
Who disciplines his wife? 

Such action doth not of thy creed 

Appear the normal fruit; 
Thou shouldst befriend a being who 

Behaves so like a brute ! 



26 



INSOMNIA 

A"^OME, vagrant sleep, and close the lid 
^^ Upon the casket of my thought; 
Come, truant, come when thou art bid, 
And let thyself be caught. 

For lonely is the night, and still; 

And save my own no breath I hear, 
No other mind, no other will, 

Nor heart nor hand is near. 

Thy waywardness what prayer can move ! 

Canst thou by any lure be brought? 
Or art thou then like woman's love 

That only comes unsought? 

Up ! Where 's my dressing-gown ? My pipe is here. 
Slumber be hanged ! Now for a book and beer. 



27 



CIVIL SERVICE 

/""^N Pennsylvania Avenue 

^-^ He stood and waited for a car; 

He turned to catch a parting view 

Of where the Public Buildings are: 
He looked at them with thoughtful eye; 

He took his hat from off his head; 
He heaved a half-regretful sigh, 

And thus he said: 

c My relative, I do the bidding 

Of Fate, and say to thee good-by. 
I think thee fortunate at ridding 

Thyself of such a clerk as I. 
Thy sure support, though somewhat meagre, 

Hath much about it to commend; 
Nor am I now so passing eager 

To leave so provident a friend. 

Light was thy yoke could I have borne it 
With tranquil mind and step sedate; 

Why did my feeble shoulders scorn it 
And seem to crave a heavier weight? 

Extremely blest is his condition 

Whose needs thy bounteous hands supply, 
28 



CIVIL SERVICE 

If he but fling away ambition 
And let the world go rushing by. 

"Indocilis pauperiem pati, 

I must get out of this damp spot. 
Away ! away ! Whatever fate I 

May have in store, I fear it not. 
Away from all my soul despises, 

From paltry aims, from sordid cares; 
Fame, honor, love, time's richest prizes, 

Lie waiting for the man who dares. 

"The man who calls no man his master, 

Nor bows his head to tinsel gods; 
Who faces debt, disease, disaster, 

And never murmurs at the odds; 
Although his life from its beginning 

Marks only fall succeeding fall, 
Let him fight on and trust to winning 

In death the richest prize of all." 

He jammed his hat down on his head; 

He turned from where the Buildings are; 
Precipitately thence he fled, 

And caught a passing car. 
29 



ALL OR NOTHING 

T TAPPY the man whose far remove 

* * From business and the giddy throng 

Fits him in the paternal groove 

Unquestioning to glide along. 
Apart from struggle and from strife, 

Content to live by labor's fruits, 
And wander down the vale of life 

In gingham shirt and cowhide boots. 

He too is blessed who, from within, 

By strong and lasting impulse stirred, 
Faces the turmoil and the din 

Of rushing life; whom hope deferred 
But more incites; who ever strives, 

And wants, and works, and waits, until 
The multitude of other lives 

Pay glorious tribute to his will. 

But he who, greedy of renown, 

Is too tenacious of his ease, 
Alas for him ! Nor busy town 

Nor country with his mood agrees; 
30 



ALL OR NOTHING 

Eager to reap, but loath to sow, 
He longs monstrari digito, 
And looking on with envious eyes, 
Lives restless and obscurely dies. 



SI 



A PHILADELPHIA CLAVERHOUSE 

" I ^O the fathers in council 'twas Witherspoon spoke: 

* "Our best beloved dogmas we cannot revoke; 
God's infinite mercy let others record, 
And teach men to trust in their crucified Lord; 
The old superstitions let others dispel, 
I feel it my duty to go in for Hell ! 

'Perdition is needful; beyond any doubt 
Hell fire is a thing that we can't do without. 
The bottomless pit is our very best claim; 
To leave it unworked were a sin and a shame; 
We must keep it up, if we like it or not, 
And make it eternal and make it red-hot. 

'To others the doctrine of love may be dear — 
I own I confide in the doctrine of fear; 
There 's nothing, I think, so effective to make 
Our weak fellow mortals their errors forsake, 
As to tell them abruptly, with unchanging front, 
' You '11 be damned if you do ! You '11 be damned if you 
don't!' 

32 



A PHILADELPHIA CLAVERHOUSE 

"Saltpetre and pitchforks, with brimstone and coals, 
Are arguments suited to rescue men's souls. 
A new generation forthwith must arise 
With Beelzebub pictured before their young eyes; 
They '11 be brave, they '11 be true, they '11 be gentle and 

kind, 
Because they '11 have Satan forever in mind." 



THROWING STONES 

[ LOVE my child," the actress wrote; 

* "My duty is to guide 

The child I bore; and in my arms 

The child I love shall hide- 
Shall hide from missiles cast at me, 

Because I have so odd 
A conscience that I choose to rear 

The child I took from God." 

There is a sin from which us all 

May gracious Heaven guard, 
That is its own worst punishment, 

Itself its sole reward. 
And of it social law has said 

To man: "If sin you must, 
Go, then, and come again, but leave 

The woman in the dust !" 

Ah ! who can know, save Him Allwise 

Who watches from above, 
The awful hazard women dare 

To run for men they love; 
34 



THROWING STONES 

Or tell how many a craven heart, 
To shield his own bad name, 

Has caused a woman's trustful love 
To bring her lasting shame ? 

To her who, when the dream has passed, 

Finds herself left alone, 
And in her crushed, repentant heart, 

A yearning to atone, 
Heaven, more pitiful than man 

Who erst upon her smiled, 
By love to win her to itself 

May send a little child. 

Then, if the lonely mother's heart 

Accepts the gracious gift; 
And if the charge she dared to take 

She does not dare to shift; 
Shall we, untempted and untried. 

To ease and virtue born, 
Visit upon her shrinking head 

Our unrelenting scorn? 

We, who have all our lives been taught 
Truths other men have learned, 
35 



THROWING STONES 

And walked by what celestial light 

In other bosoms burned; 
We, whose sublimest duty is 

To do as we are bid; 
How shall we judge a soul from which 

The face of God is hid? 



Know you the loneliness of heart 

That courts release from death? 
That makes it burdensome to draw 

Each slow, successive breath? 
That longs for human sympathy, 

Until, when hope is lost, 
A respite from its agony 

It buys at any cost? 

Of erring human nature, we 

Are born, each with his share; 
We all are vain; we all are weak, 

And quick to fly from care. 
And if we keep our footing, 

Or seem to rise at all, 
'Twere well for us with charity 

To look on those who fall. 



THROWING STONES 

And if our hands are strengthened, 

And if our lips can speak, 
'Twere well if with them we might help 

Our brothers who are weak; 
And well if we remember 

God's love is never grudged, 
And never sit in judgment, 

If we would not be judged. 



37 



TOUCHING BOTTOM 

j THINK that I have somewhere read 
A About a man whose foolish head, 
By mischievous intention led, 

A sprite 
Had with an ass's visage decked. 
That all who met him might detect 
His intellectual defect 

At sight. 

The trite remark of man and book 
That many men are men in look, 
But donkeys really, thus the spook 

Reversed; 
The victim of the imp's design 
Had such a head as yours or mine, 
Although his did seem asinine 

At first. 

But Love — I think the story ran — 
Was proof against the fairy's plan, 
Discerning through the mask the man, 

Perhaps; 

38 



TOUCHING BOTTOM 

Or, is it true that women try, 
But very faintly, to descry 
Long ears on heads that occupy 
Their laps ! 

I know a youth whose fancy gropes 
For headgear finer than the Pope's, 
So him his bright and treacherous hopes 

Delude; 
But, in the mirror of his fears, 
When this too sanguine person peers, 
Alas ! behold the jackass ears 

Protrude ! 

Titania, mine, if I could find 

You always to my follies blind, 

So great content would rule my mind 

Within, 
That even though myself aware 
Of pointed ears adorned with hair, 
I do not think that I would care 

A pin. 



HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE 

TT was my happy lot to meet 

* Upon a late occasion, 

While seeking of the summer's heat 

Agreeable evasion, 
By visiting at a resort 

Of fashion — where, no matter" — 
A maid whom there was none to court, 

And very few to flatter. 

Her head had not the graceful poise 

Of Aphrodite's statue; 
Her hair reminded you of boys; 

Her nose was pointed at you. 
A Derby hat, the self-same sort 

The fashionable male owes 
Money for, she used to sport 

As angels do their halos. 

She seldom walked in silk attire, 

But commonly in flannel: 
Not yet in oils did she aspire 

To figure on a panel; 
40 



HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE 

Because she could not help but see 

She was not tall nor slender; 
Nor did she deem her curves to be 

Superlatively tender. 

Some prudish dames did her abuse 

With censure fierce and scathing; 
Because she, happening to lose 

Her stocking while in bathing, 
Deemed such a loss of little note, 

And simply tied the plagued 
Stocking 'round her little throat 

And reappeared barelegged. 

I do not think that for the pelf 

Of eligible boobies, 
Or for the chance to deck herself 

With diamonds and rubies, 
Or for her standing in the books 

Of prim and proper ladies, 
Or for their disapproving looks, 

She cared a hoot from Hades. 

Though competent to hold her tongue, 
When circumstance demanded 
41 



HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE 

Speech, she was, for one so young, 

Astonishingly candid. 
She sang the vulgarest of songs, 

Which sung by her were funny, 
And never brooded o'er her wrongs — 

Nor hoarded up her money. 

'Tis true this careless damsel's fame 

At last grew somewhat shady; 
But if the man disposed to name 

Her fast, or not a lady, 
Will in the present writer's way 

Considerately toddle, 
This writer thinks that person may 

Get punched upon his noddle. 



42 



LOCHINVAR EX-COLORADO 

OH, the cow-puncher Budge has come in from the 
West; 
In all Colorado his ranch is the best; 
And, barring a toothbrush, he baggage had none, 
For he came in some haste, and he came not for fun; 
Nor vigils nor gold to his quest doth he grudge — 
On an errand of love comes the cow-puncher Budge. 

A telegram reached him; he called for a horse. 
He rode ninety miles as a matter of course; 
The last twenty-seven he galloped, and then 
Just caught the Atlantic Express at Cheyenne. 
He stayed not to eat nor to drink, for he knew 
He could pick up a meal on the C. B. & Q. 

He got to Chicago the second day out, 

But right through Chicago he kept on his route, 

Nor stayed to buy linen, not even a shirt; 

He liked flannel best and he didn't mind dirt. 

With trousers tucked into his boots, said he "Fudge ! — 

Small odds — if I get there," said bold Robert Budge. 



43 



LOCHINVAR EX-COLORADO 

From Worth, the Parisian of awful repute, 

Had come divers gowns to Angelica Bute, 

And parcels from Tiffany daily were stowed 

Away in strong rooms of her father's abode; 

But she languished, nor heeded she hint, cough or nudge; 

She was bound to Fitz James, but she cottoned to Budge. 

But hark ! 'Tis the door-bell ! a symptom of joy 
Lights her eye — ''Ah ! at last !" Tis a telegraph boy; 
The maid brings a message; she takes it, half -dead 
With mingled excitement, hope, eagerness — dread: 
"Mayor's house on Thursday, at nine; let me judge 
What next ! only meet me there. 

Faithfully, 

Budge." 

On Thursday at nine, to the house of the Mayor 

Two persons came singly, but left it a pair, 

A man and a bride in a travelling dress, 

Went Westward at ten on the Lightning Express. 

A wedding at Grace Church, which should have occurred 

At twelve, was, for reasons not given, deferred. 

The dowagers called it the greatest of shames. 
The men said, "It 's rough on that fellow Fitz James"; 

44 






LOCHINVAR EX-COLORADO 

The damsels declared it was awfully nice, 

And vowed they could do it and never think twice. 

"It 's a chore to get housemaids; you may have to 

drudge 
At the start; but — I love you," said cow-puncher Budge. 



45 



A MORTIFYING SUBJECT 

WHAT is to be, I do not know: 
What is, I do esteem 
To be so undesirable 

And worthless, that I deem 
There must be something good in store, 

Something to keep in view, 
To compensate us living here, 
For living as we do. 

For life — oh life, it seems a chore ! 

Its surface is so blurred 
By cares and passions that it makes 

One long to be interred; 
To occupy a tranquil spot 

Some seven feet by two, 
And just serenely lie and rot, 

With nothing else to do. 

I think that when there ceased to be 

Sufficient tenement 
To hold my conscience, then I would 

Begin to be content. 
46 



A MORTIFYING SUBJECT 

And if I should be there to see 
My stomach take its leave, 

I 'd gather up my mouldering shroud 
And chuckle in my sleeve. 

I think that when the greedy worm 

Began upon my brains, 
I 'd wish him luck, and hope he 'd get 

His dinner for his pains. 
I 'd warn him that they would be apt 

With him to disagree, 
For if they fed him well 'twere what 

They seldom did for me. 

But when I should be certain that 

My scarred and battered heart 
Was of my corporality 

Not any more a part, 
Though I 'd no voice, I 'd rattle in 

My throat, with joyous tones; 
And with no feelings left, I would 

Feel happy in my bones. 



47 



MIXED 

WITHIN my earthly temple there 's a crowd. 
There one of us that 's humble; one that 's 
proud. 
There 's one that 's broken-hearted for his sins, 
And one who, unrepentant, sits and grins. 
There 's one who loves his neighbor as himself, 
And one who cares for naught but fame and pelf. 
From much corroding care would I be free 
If once I could determine which is me. 



48 



i 



AND WAS HE RIGHT? 

' J 'M going to marry — not you," she said, 

"But a better fellow in your stead. 
You 're not so bad — not bad at all; 
I 'd like to keep you within my call, 
But not to take you for good and all. 
I 'm going to live on yonder street; 
Do you live near me," she said; "so sweet 
As I '11 be to you whenever we meet ! 
And in my house there '11 be a seat 
Where you can sit and warm your feet, 
And your contentment shall be complete — 
Come! Isn't it a divine conceit?" 

She said. 

Softly his breast a sigh set free: 
He said, "Dear Heart, it may not be. 
Not for the perfume of the rose 
Would I live near to where it grows. 
If not for me the bud has blown, 
I 'd rather leave the flower alone. 
Who by the bush sits down forlorn 
Is only fit to feel the thorn," 

He said. 
49 



BALLADE OF THE GENERAL 
TERM 

F7ACH in his high official chair; 

■■— ' One who presides; two plain J. J. 
Decent of mien and white of hair 
They sit there judging all the day. 
The gravity of what they say 
Bent brows and sober tones confirm; 
Brown, Jones and Robinson are they, 
Justices of the General Term. 

I see the learned counsel there 
Rise up and argue, move and pray; 
Attorneys with respectful air 
Their perspicacity display. 
Serenely joyous if they may 
Of justice keep alive the germ; 
Motion and argument they weigh, 
Those justices of General Term. 

That court I haunt, not that I care 
For justice in a general way; 
Nor yet because I hope to share 
With any one a client's pay. 
50 



BALLADE OF THE GENERAL TERM 

The reason why I there delay 
And on the court's hard benches squirm 
Is that of Love I am the prey — 
Her father's of the General Term. 

ENVOY 

I look at him with dire dismay — 
Scorched by his eye I seem a worm. 
"Dismissed with costs," is what he '11 say — 
That Justice of the General Term. 



51 



INFIRM 

1 T WILL not go," he said, "for well 
* I know her eyes' insidious spell, 
And how unspeakably he feels 
Who takes no pleasure in his meals. 
I know a one-idea'd man 
Should undergo the social ban, 
And if she once my purpose melts 
I know I '11 think of nothing else. 

I care not though her teeth are pearls — 
The town is full of nicer girls ! 
I care not though her lips are red — 
It does not do to lose one's head ! 
I '11 give her leisure to discover, 
For once, how little I think of her; 
And then, how will she feel?" cried he — 
And took his hat and went to see. 



52 



CRUMBS AND COMFORT 

TET no man, irked by tedious fate, 
^— ' The worth of victuals underrate; 
But thankful be if so he may 
Environ three square meals a day; 

For, barring drink, there 's naught so good, 

Up to its limit's edge, as food. 

Up to its limit? Yes, but will 

Food satisfy as well as fill? 

Hear humankind responsive groan — 

Man cannot live by bread alone ! " 

Oh, tell me, Sibyl, tell me whether 
A man might live on bread — together ! 



53 






ASHORE 

Mans happiness depends upon the views 
He takes of circumstances that he's in. 

To some it is a greater joy to lose 
Than it, to others, ever is to win. 

OINCE our poor hopes, like vessels tempest-tossed, 
^ Are duly wrecked, and all illusion ceases; 
Now that the game is up, let 's count the cost 
And estimate the value of the pieces. 



And first, our heart: It was a flimsy thing 
Already when we dared this last adventure; 

And if it 's flimsy still — why that should bring 
No added liability to censure. 

A serviceable organ is it still, 

That does our turn in absence of a better; 
And very shortly, we believe, it will 

As calmly thump as though we 'd never met her. 

If tissues are so delicately spun 

As not to stand a reasonable racket, 
Their anxious owner has as little fun 

As Master Thomas in his Sunday jacket. 
54 



ASHORE 

Give tender hearts to those who like that kind, 
And gain in strength with every pang they suffer-, 

We praise that sort, but with relief we find 

That ours is tough and yearly growing tougher. 

Our head remains the same indifferent pate, 
Guiltless alike of learning and of laurels. 

We notice, though, with thankfulness, of late 
A measure of improvement in our morals. 

Our purse was always lean, so it amounts 
To little that it yet remains depleted; 

Though florists' and confectioners' accounts 
Are in, and payment of the same entreated. 

We 've lost a heap of time, but being rid 
Of time, one always gets along without it. 

Could we have spent it better than we did ! 
Another might; but, for ourself, we doubt it. 

And we have learned — nothing. We knew before 

The folly and the vanity of wooing: 
And if we chose to try it still once more, 

'Twas not to win, but simply to be doing. 
55 



ASHORE 

It was not that we hoped to gain a heart; 

That that were vain required no further proving. 
It only meant that souls that live apart 

Yield sometimes to the human need of loving. 

Is this the last? While yet his garments drip 
The stranded mariner forgets his pain, 

And rescuing the remnants of his ship, 
Already plans to make them float again. 



56 



BARTER 

YES, there 's a hole; you needn't be 
At pains to point it out to me: 
I know it. 
I do not claim the piece is whole, 
Or that its yard of width is full: 
I merely show it. 

Fast color? Do I really think 
That being soaked it will not shrink 

When dried? 
Now that I 've got it off the shelf, 
You 'd better test the dyes yourself, 

And so decide. 

Cotton ? I dare surmise it 's full 

Of threads that one might wish were wool, 

If wishing did it. 
Look sharp; but if through being blind 
Some flaw or fault you fail to find, 

Don't say I hid it. 
57 



BARTER 

The price is high? You think it so? 
Well, this is not, I 'd have you know, 

A bankrupt sale. 
These wares of mine if you despise, 
Some other dealer's merchandise 
May find more favor in your eyes; 
To hold mine over for a rise 

I shall not fail. 



58 



BEGGARS' HORSES 

bnA 
] WISH that altitude of tone, 
* The waistband's due expansion, 
The faculty to hold one's own 

In this and t'other mansion; 
And shirts and shoes and moral force, 

Topcoats and overgaiters, 
Were things that always came of course 

To philosophic waiters. 

I wish that not by twos and threes, 

In squads and plural numbers, 
Young women would destroy one's ease 

Of mind and rout one's slumbers; 
But that if by a poor heart's squirms 

Their pleasures know accession, 
They 'd hold it for successive terms 

In several possession. 

I wish I had been changed at birth, 

And in my place maturing 
Some infant of surpassing worth, 

Industrious past curing, 
59 



BEGGARS' HORSES 

Had grown up subject to my share 

In Father Adam's blunder, 
And left me free to pile up care 

For him to stagger under. 

I wish that some things could be had 

Without foregoing others; 
That all the joys that are not bad 

Were not weighed down with bothers. 
We can but wonder as we test 

The scheme of compensations, 
Is happiness with drawbacks best, 

Or grief with consolations. 



TO-DAY 

SEE that what burdens Heaven may lay 
Upon your shrinking neck to-day, 
To-day you bear; 
Nor seek to shun their weary weight, 
Nor, bowed with dread, anticipate 
To-morrow's care. 

Not with too great a load shall Fate, 
That knows the end, your shoulders freight 

Or heart oppress; 
If but to-day's appointed work 
You grapple with, nor wish to shirk 

Its due distress. 

The coward heart that turns away 
From present tasks, with justice may 

Forebodings fill. 
Fools try to quaff to-morrow's wine; 
As though to-morrow's sun could shine 

Unrisen still. 



Gl 



OF MISTRESS MARTHA: HER 
EYES 

TRANSFIXED and spitted in my heart 
■* By Mistress Martha's eyes, their dart, 
Which has within me raised a great 
Commotion and uneasy state. 

Or are they black or are they blue 
I know not any more than you, 
Nor could I for a wager say 
If they be hazel, brown or gray. 

But when it comes to diagnosis 
Of what the outcome of their use is 
Full, comprehensive and exact 
Is my conception of the fact. 

When first their witchery has begun 
You might be saved if you would run: 
But who would look for cause for fear 
In depths so limpid, calm and clear? 
Too soon, poor fool, you find you 've stayed 
Till it 's too late to be afraid. 
62 



OF MISTRESS MARTHA: HER EYES 

Alas for him who thus misreckons. 
For friendly lights mistaking beacons. 
Better it were if he had found 
Clarence, his fate, in Malmsey drowned, 
Than Mistress, in thine eyes to sink, 
Nor make a tear o'erflow its brink. 



THE BEST GIFT OF ALL 

/^VNE-AND-TWENTY, one-and-twenty, 
^^ Youth and beauty, lovers plenty; 
Health and riches, ease and leisure, 
Work to give a zest to pleasure; 
What can a maid so lucky lack? 
What can I wish that Fate holds back? 

Youth will fade and beauty wanes; 
Lovers, flouted, break their chains. 
Health may fail and wealth may fly you, 
Pleasures cease to satisfy you; 
Almost everything that brings 
Happiness is born with wings. 

This I wish you — this is best: 
Love that can endure the test; 
Love surviving youth and beauty, 
Love that blends with homely duty, 
Love that 's gentle, love that 's true, 
Love that 's constant wish I you. 

Still unsatisfied she lives 
Who for gold mere silver gives. 
64 



THE BEST GIFT OF ALL 

One more joy I wish you yet, 

To give as much love as you get. 

Grant you, heaven, this to do, 

To love him best who best loves you. 






65 



AUTUMN 

| HAVE sundry queer sensations 
* When the year gets round to Autumn. 
What they are, and how I caught 'em 
Is obscure, but they are there — 
Certain gay exhilarations 

Half-and-half, as Bass with Guinness, 
With a sad what-might-have-been-ness 
In the brisk September air. 

Back come hopes and young ambitions 
With the golden-rod and sumach, 
But impregnated with true Mach- 
iavellian despair. 
Taking note of changed conditions; 
Weighing powers with limitations ! 
Facts with futile aspirations 
Born of bracing autumn air. 

Now I see myself grown famous, 
Bold of voice and free of gesture, 
Grave, superb, of stunning vesture, 
Flood with eloquence the court. 
66 



AUTUMN 

Soon ascends my Gaudeamus 
As I realize there aren't 
Any facts that seem to warrant 
Premonitions of that sort. 

Welcome each hallucination: 

Welcome, none the less, discerning 
Common sense in time returning 
To obliterate the spell. 
As a means of elevation — 
As a sort of moral derrick, 
This autumnal, atmospheric 
Spirit-hoister bears the bell. 



67 



REMORSE 

JV /I Y spirit sits in ashes, heaping dust upon its head; 
^ v 1 I Ve said a silly thing, and now it cannot be 

unsaid. 
What boots it that to only two the wretched truth is 

known, 
If of the conscious pair who know it I myself am one? 

I have my doubts — more doubts the more I think of what 

I said — 
If, really, half a loaf is so much better than no bread; 
For if a person is an ass, and duly bound to show it, 
Cold comfort 'tis that he should have just sense enough 

to know it. 



68 



HUMPTY DUMPTY 

THEY say that folks who perch upon the brink 
Of canon deep or awful precipice 
A morbid impulse feel as back they shrink, 

To jump the edge off into the abyss; 
And now and then some feather-head will dash 
Over the cliff to fundamental smash. 
So often with a man when he has won 

The passing favor of a maid demure, 
Not satisfied with having well begun, 

And over-eager to make all secure, 
Blind to his fate and heedless of his stops, 
With mad, spasmodic previousness, he pops. 

Poor, dizzy fool; instead of winning more 

He only loses what he had before. 



RETIREMENT 

IV JAY, do not ask why I who late 

I ^ First in the giddy throng disported, 

Now choose the solitary state 

And live alone unmissed, uncourted. 
Is it so strange that sometimes man 

His own poor company should cherish? 
Must I go on as I began 

And dance, whoever pipes, or perish ? 

It may be that some stocks I had 

At lower figures now are quoted. 
It may be that my liver 's bad; 

It may be that my tongue is coated. 
It may be that malarial pains 

Are of the ills my flesh inherits — 
That fever rages in my veins 

And chills disintegrate my spirits. 

It may be that my friends are dead; 

It may be that my foes are not; 
Colds may have settled in my head, 

My coppers may be always hot. 
70 



RETIREMENT 

It may be that I feel above 

My peers, and think myself a swell; 
It may be that I 'm crossed in love; 

It may be that I will not tell. 

I own I find a mean relief, 

Confining to myself my dealings; 
A cheap community of grief 

Between me and my battered feelings, 
I shun the haunts of happier men; 

Their mirth my misery increases; 
My little bark is wrecked again 

And I am busy with the pieces. 



71 



SELF-SACRIFICE 

OHE said, "I admire and approve you, 
^ My intellect's voice is for you; 
But when you entreat me to love you, 

I own I 'm at loss what to do. 
How I wish that on one or the other 

My heart and my head might agree; 
I esteem you so much ! but — Oh, bother ! 

My heart's choice is Barney McGee." 

Which the reason is why dissipation 

Has ravaged the bloom from my cheek, 
And nothing but liquid damnation 

Has slipped past my lips for a week. 
Since, I hope, as depravity marks me, 

To make him by contrast so shine 
That all her approval may his be, 

And her love irretrievably mine. 



72 



WHAT HE WANTS IN HIS 

I DO not ask thee, Fate, to bake 

* For me so very large a cake; 

Choose thou the size — but I entreat 

That though but small, it shall be sweet. 
Let those who like it have it, I 
Feel no desire for sawdust pie. 

I have no wail for all the years 

I 've lived on crusts washed down with tears. 

If I must drain the bitter cup 

As heretofore, why — fill it up. 

But when my cake, if ever, comes, 
Vouchsafe it to me full of plums ! 



73 



BE KIND TO THYSELF 

/^^OMES the message from above — 
^-^ "As thyself, thy neighbor, love." 

With myself so vexed I grow — 

Of my weakness weary so, 
Easier may I tolerate 
My neighbor than myself not hate. 

Take not part of thee for whole. 

Thou art neighbor to thy soul. 

The ray from heaven that gilds the clod 
Love thou, for it comes from God. 

Bear thou with thy human clay 

Lest thou miss the heaven-sent ray. 



74 



LOST LIGHT 

T CANNOT make her smile come back- 
That sunshine of her face 
That used to make this worn earth seem, 

At times, so gay a place. 
The same dear eyes look out at me; 

The features are the same; 
But, oh, the smile is out of them, 

And I must be to blame ! 

Sometimes I see it still. I went 

With her the other day 
To meet a long-missed friend, and while 

We still were on the way, 
Her confidence in waiting love 

Brought back for me to see 
The old-time love-light to her eyes 

That will not shine for me. 

They tell me money waits for me, 

And reputation, too. 
I like those gewgaws quite as well 

As other people do, 
75 



LOST LIGHT 

But I care not for what I have, 

Nor lust for what I lack 
One tithe as much as my heart longs 

To call that lost light back. 

Come back, dear banished smile, come back, 

And into exile drive 
All thoughts, and aims, and jealous hopes, 

That in thy stead would thrive. 
Who wants the earth without its sun, 

And what has life for me 
That 's worth a thought, if, as its price, 

It leaves me stript of thee? 



76 



DATED "FEBRUARY THE 14TH" 

IDLEST be St. Valentine, his day. 
That gives a man a chance to say 
What shall his state of mind disclose, 
As much as though he should propose. 

Dear Maid : I 'd offer you this minute 
My hand, but lo ! there 's nothing in it. 
Enmeshed my heart by your dear lures is, 
But I 'm forbid to ask where yours is. 

And why ? Why, dear, at twenty-three 
A man is what he 's going to be; 
Futures are actual in one's head, 
But isness is what women wed. 
Clients nor patients, nor their fees, 
Your slave at three-and-twenty sees, 
And girls with nineteen-year-old blushes 
Are birds he must leave in the bushes. 

Yet somehow feelings don't agree 
With circumstances: Look at me 
With naught in hand and all to get, 

77 



DATED "FEBRUARY THE 14TH" 

Rapping at Fortune's gate — and yet 
In spite of all I know, and see, 
And listen to, I could not be 
More hopelessly in love with you 
If I were rich and sixty-two. 

That 's all: It 's nothing that you '11 find 
Important, but it 's off my mind. 
If one must boil and keep it hid 
The long year through, to blow the lid 
Off once helps some, and one may gain 
Patience therefrom to stand the pain 
Until the calendar's advance 
Gives suffering hearts another chance. 



78 



LOOKING ON 

r T" v HE dolce far niente is a delightful game 

* If only he can spare the time who plays it. 
If one is three-and-twenty and doesn't covet fame, 
And cares less what he says than how he says it — 
If one deliberately can (and never think it loss) 
Earn women's smiles in hours in which he might be earn- 
ing dross — 
If one can be content to sit and watch, year after year, 
The world's great ships go sailing by, and never want to 

steer — 
If one is not aware that standing still means slipping 

back, 
Or if one 's not averse to retrograding on one's track — 
The dolce far niente is a delightful game 
For people who have lives to spare to play it. 



79 



REVULSION 

r ~PHE very bones of me rebel; 

* I cannot be resigned; 
I am so all-too-tired-to-tell, 

Of being so refined. 
My instincts are too nasty nice, 

I 'd rather be more brute, 
And not so easy to disgust, 

And difficult to suit. 

My fun is all a razor-edge 

And needle-point affair, 
That has no substance back of it. 

My very woes are spare, 
And decorous, and qualified. 

A robust grief to me, 
With groans, and tears, and takings on, 

Would be a luxury. 

I vow I 'm going to learn to chew, 
And navy-plug, what 's more; 

I 'in going to wear a gingham shirt, 
And spit right on the floor. 
80 



REVULSION 

Cravats and collars I '11 abjure, 

A slouch shall be my hat, 
My diet pork, with cabbage (boiled), 

And beer — bock-beer at that ! 

I '11 learn to drive a speedy nag, 

And laugh a boisterous laugh; 
To down men bluntly in dispute, 

Or shut them up with chaff. 
I 'd go to Congress if I could, 

And since I can't go there, 
I 'd gladly be an alderman 

Or even run for mayor. 

I cannot stand it any more, 

My culture 's not the stuff; 
For though it 's pretty to be nice, 

It 's wholesome to be tough. 
Perhaps when I 've grown coarser-grained, 

I '11 have less cause to sigh, 
At finding that my fellows have 

So much more fun than I. 



81 



FOLGER 

TIE died in harness, like the brave 
* * Old warrior he was, who dared 
To lead a hopeless charge, nor spared 
His strength, nor sought himself to save. 

His learning freights the lawyer's shelf; 
Praise him who played so high a part ! 
But honor more the loyal heart 
That calmly sacrificed itself. 

It is not ours to choose what prize 
Our manhood's hopes shall satisfy; 
That we must leave to destiny, 
And work out that which in us lies; 

Content, if justly may be carved 
Upon the slab our dust that guards, 
Not a mere list of earth's rewards, 
But nobler tribute, this: "He served." 



82 



GRANT 

NO faultless man was he whose work is done. 
It is not giv'n men to be wholly wise: 
Still shall our deeds be sometimes ill-advised, 
While in our veins still human blood shall run. 
But sundered States, now one again, attest 
That what he gave his country was his best. 

'Spoiled of his fortune, rifled of his ease, 

Above all ills his stubborn spirit rose. 

Declining proffered affluence, he chose — 

Though wrung with pain and weakened by disease — 
That his own shoulders should support the weight 
Of woe laid on them by ungentle fate. 

The silent soldier; not with fulsome gaud 

May we oppress the chaplet that he wears. 

Freed from his pain, nor hears he now nor cares 

If men his fame disparage or applaud. 
Of his renown be this the mighty meed — 
He served his country in his country's need. 



83 



POEMS AND VERSES 



THE SEA IS HIS 

A LMIGHTY wisdom made the land 
** Subject to man's disturbing hand, 
And left it all for him to fill 
With marks of his ambitious will, 
But differently devised the sea 
Unto an unlike destiny. 

Urgent and masterful ashore, 

Man dreams and plans, 

And more and more, 

As ages slip away, Earth shows 

How need by satisfaction grows, 

And more and more its patient face 

Mirrors the driving human race. 

But he who ploughs the abiding deep 
No furrow leaves, nor stays to reap. 
Unmarred and unadorned, the sea 
Rolls on as irresistibly 
As when, at first, the shaping thought 
Of God its separation wrought. 
87 



THE SEA IS HIS 

Down to its edge the lands-folk flock, 
And in its salt embraces mock 
Sirius, his whims. Forever cool, 
Its depths defy the day-star's rule: 
Serene it basks while children's hands 
Its margin score and pit its sands. 

And ever in it life abides, 
And motion. To and fro its tides, 
Borne down with waters, ever fare. 
However listless hangs the air, 
Still, like a dreamer, all at rest, 
Rises and falls the ocean's breast. 

Benign, or roused by savage gales; 

Fog veiled, or flecked with gleaming sails; 

A monster ravening for its prey, 

Anon, the nations' fair highway — 

In all its moods, in all its might, 

'Tis the same sea that first saw light. 

The sea the Tyrians dared explore; 
The sea Odysseus wandered o'er; 
The sea the cruising Northmen harried, 
That Carthage wooed, and Venice married; 
88 



THE SEA IS HIS 

Across whose wastes, by faith led on, 
Columbus tracked the westering sun. 

Great nurse of freedom, breeding men 
Who dare, and baffled, strive again ! 
A rampart round them in their youth, 
A refuge in their straits and ruth, 
And in their seasoned strength, a road 
To carry liberty abroad ! 

When all about thy billows lie, 
Sole answer to the questioning eye, 
To where the firmament its bound 
Stretches their heaving masses round, 
With that above, and only thee, 
Fixed in thine instability — 

Then timely to the soul of man 
Come musings on the eternal plan 
Which man himself was made to fit, 
And Earth and waters under it; 
Wherewith in harmony they move, 
And only they, whose guide is love. 

Who made the plan and made the sea 
Denied not man a destiny 
89 



THE SEA IS HIS 

To match his thought. Though mists obscure 
And storms retard, the event is sure. 
Each surging wave cries evermore 
"Death, also, has its farther shore!" 



WORK 

THE Inscrutable who set this orb awhirl 
And peopled it with men and mysteries, 
With height and vale diversified its face, 
Left beast to prey on beast and fish on fish, 
Geared life to death, conditioned each on each, 
Sore price of growth, but indispensable. 
To poverty He gave its warning sting, 
And poisoned luxury with seeds of sloth. 
Gave power to strength that effort might attain: 
Gave power to wit that knowledge might direct; 
And so with penalties, incentives, gains, 
Limits and compensations intricate, 
He dowered this earth, that man should never rest 
Save as his Maker's will be carried out. 

On toward his destiny the creature drives, 
Tumultuous, incessant, mutinous. 
Usurping now his weaker fellow's share, 
Yielding again his own to stronger might, 
Aye seeking such a place or such a hoard 
That he and his the common lot may cheat, 
And live unvexed by fate. 
91 



WORK 

Vain wish ! fond dream 
That ever fades on eve of coming true ! 
There is no easy, unearned joy on earth 
Save what God gives; — the lustiness of youth, 
And love's dear pangs. All other joys we gain 
By striving, and so qualified we are 
That effort's zest our needs as much consoles 
As effort's gain. Both issues are our due. 
Sore lot it is to sweat and not be filled, 
But sore as well aye to be filled, nor sweat. 
Ever to plough and see another reap — 
Oh, that is hard; but ease that stretches far 
Beyond the space that labor's waste repairs, 
Speeds to decay. Death lies hid in that, 
And seeds of every sin that rots the strength 
And stains the soul. Better when work is past 
Back into dust dissolve and help a seed 
Climb upward, than with strength still full 
Deny to God his claim and thwart his wish. 

Fond fools with gold in store whose end they 
miss, 
Glutted with unused opportunity, 
Behold, drift idle on inglorious tides, 
Nor ever trim a sail nor make a port; 
92 



WORK 

Playing that life is play, until at last 
They sink at anchor. 

Sorrier still the wights 
Whom poverty's distresses vainly goad, 
Whose wants too grasping for their shiftless powers 
Drive not to work but from it. This too hard 
They deem, and that too slow, and ever seeking ease 
And shunning toil, nor gold nor strength they win, 
But weak, inapt, unskilled, incapable, 
Their bitter cry assails the tranquil stars 
While labor's trampling hosts surge over them. 

To our dim sense God's plan seems often harsh. 
Big fish eats small; earthquakes and storms destroy; 
Greed strips the poor; guile plunders righteousness. 
But watch ! see empires fall; see greed o'erreach 
Its lust ! see power in fear of rival power 
Raise up its subject strength, clothe hands with skill, 
Teach minds to think; were strength not powerful 
Whose need would nourish thew and burnish thought? 
Could not the leader and the learner claim 
Their effort's guerdon, on a stagnant earth 
Successive races round and round might move, 
But never forward. Wounds and wants and fears, 
The seething urgency of discontent, 

93 



WORK 

And groans and tears, grim tokens in themselves, 
May help mankind fulfil its destiny. 

Oh, Prodigal of means and men and time, 
But in decree and aim immutable, 
Our doom, black sometimes when we shrink from it, 
Shines glorious when we face it sturdily, 
And see the shaping and compelling hand 
That leads who will be led and drives the rest! 



94 



WORTH WHILE 

I PRAY Thee, Lord, that when it comes to me 
To say if I will follow Truth and Thee, 
Or choose instead to win as better worth 
My pains, some cloying recompense of earth — 

Grant me, great Father, from a hard-fought field, 
Forespent and bruised, upon a battered shield, 
Home to obscure endurance to be borne 
Rather than live my own mean gains to scorn. 

Far better fall with face turned toward the goal 
At one with wisdom and my own worn soul, 
Than ever come to see myself prevail, 
When to succeed at last is but to fail. 

Mean ends to win and therewith be content — 
Save me from that ! Direct Thou the event 
As suits Thy will: where'er the prizes go, 
Grant me the struggle, that my soul may grow. 



95 



EGOTISM 

WITHOUT him still this whirling earth 
Might spin its course around the sun, 
And death still dog the heels of birth, 
And life be lived, and duty done. 

Without him let the rapt earth dree 
What doom its twin rotations earn; 

Whither or whence, are naught to me, 
Save as his being they concern. 

Comets may crash, or inner fire 
Burn out and leave an arid crust, 

Or earth may lose Cohesion's tire, 
And melt to planetary dust. 

It 's naught to me if he 's not here. 

I '11 not lament, nor even sigh; 
I shall not feel the jar, nor fear, 

For I am he, and he is I. 



96 



BROTHERHOOD 

THAT plenty but reproaches me 
Which leaves my brother bare. 
Not wholly glad my heart can be 

While his is bowed with care. 
If I go free, and sound and stout 

While his poor fetters clank, 
Unsated still, I '11 still cry out, 
And plead with Whom I thank. 

Almighty: Thou who Father be 

Of him, of me, of all, 
Draw us together, him and me, 

That whichsoever fall, 
The other's hand may fail him not,- 

The other's strength decline 
No task of succor that his lot 

May claim from son of Thine. 

I would be fed. I would be clad. 

I would be housed and dry. 
But if so be my heart is sad, — 

What benefit have I ? 
97 



BROTHERHOOD 

Best he whose shoulders best endure 
The load that brings relief, 

And best shall he his joy secure 
Who shares that joy with grief. 



98 



WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 

Ob., 1896 

[From a poem read at the dinner of the Harvard Class of 1877, in 
Boston, June 29, 1897.] 

T T ARD hit ? Ah, yes ! denial's vain — 
* * Far from our thoughts and wishes too. 
Stripped of our best, we meet again 

To share a cup that 's tinged with rue. 
Dear man, how proud he made us all ! 

Our honest statesman, patriot, mate, 
Whose very rivals lived to call 

His death a mischief to the State ! 

With shining eyes we watched his course 

Impetuous to an early goal; 
A man of an inspiring force, 

Whose pockets could not hold his soul ! 
Who strove without surcease or fear, 

Nor from his task withdrew his hand, 
Until the fame of his career 

Edged the far corners of the land. 

His head was clear, his heart was good, 
His speech was plain, without pretence; 



WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL 

Men trusted him as one who stood 
For honesty and common-sense. 

Ah ! not unshared is our distress, 
Nor here alone is missed his face; 

A million freemen, leaderless, 

Still wonder who shall take his place. 



100 



LINES INSCRIBED ON A 
HOSPITAL CLOCK* 

SING, little hours, of Edith, as you pass, 
Who had too few of you, but those she had 
Spent like a Queen of Time. 
Sing of her as you chime ! 
How. as she spent you, generous and glad, 
To help the suffering and cheer the sad, 
Time turned his glass. 

* E. B. W., 06., 1907. 



101 



A GIRL OF POMPEII 

A PUBLIC haunt they found her in: 
^*- She lay asleep, a lovely child; 

The only thing left undefined 
Where all things else bore taint of sin. 

Her supple outlines fixed in clay 

The universal law suspend, 

And turn Time's chariot back, and blend 
A thousand years with yesterday. 

A sinless touch, austere yet warm, 
Around her girlish figure pressed, 
Caught the sweet imprint of her breast, 

And held her, surely clasped, from harm. 

Truer than work of sculptor's art 
Comes this dear maid of long ago, 
Sheltered from woful chance, to show 

A spirit's lovely counterpart, 

And bid mistrustful men be sure, 
That form shall fate of flesh escape, 
And, quit of earth's corruptions, shape 

Itself, imperishably pure. 
102 



GIFTS 

HPHE imperial Child to whom the wise men brought 

-I Their gifts, and worshipped in His lowly nest, 
Gave no gift back. It was Himself they sought, 

And, finding Him, were sated in their quest. 
Their gifts, not expectation, but their joy expressed. 

Now was the world's long yearning satisfied ! 
Now was the prize long waited for possessed ! 

Their gifts meant love, unmarred by lust or pride. 
Be it so with ours: our aim, not debts to pay, 

Nor any recompense save love to win, 
Nor any grosser feeling to convey 

Than brought the wise men's gifts to Bethlehem's 
inn. 
Those rate we best that no return afford 
Save the pure sense of having found our Lord. 



103 



CHRISTMAS, 1900 

/^""^ OD bless all givers and their gifts, 
^-^ And all the giftless, too, 
And help them by whatever shifts 

Their kindly will to do. 
When seasons, which our hearts expand, 

Our purses fail to fill, 
A word, a smile, a clasp of hand 

Shall carry our good- will. 

Let him who hath his plenty share, 

And him who lacks, his lack. 
Give, each one, what he may, nor care 

What recompense comes back. 
If only love his heart shall swell 

And kindness guide his hand, 
His Christmas he shall keep as well 

As any in the land. 

Out, greed! Out, guile! Out, jealousy 1 

Out, envy ! Out, despair ! 
Come, hope ! Come, faith ! Come, charity ! 

And ease the pains of care. 
106 



CHRISTMAS, 1900 

Come, Christmas, with thy message dear, 

And all thy gentle mirth, 
To teach that love shall cast out fear, 

And peace shall reign on earth. 



107 



NEW YEAR'S, 1900 

/^VNE greeting more to one of noble fame, 
^■^ Our comrade since our birth; our fathers', too; 
Into whose spring-time hopes our grandsires came, 
Whose promises to them for us came true. 

What struggles and what gains have filled his day ! 

What peerless triumphs of a mind set free ! 
What stubborn shrinking, oftentimes, to pay 

The woful birth-price of the is-to-be. 

Hoary, sublime, deathless yet doomed to die, 
No other Xew Year's dawning his shall be. 

Vouchsafe him, Time, such end that men shall cry, 
"Grand was thy passing, Nineteenth Century !" 



108 



AUGUST 

WHEN vagrant clouds drift in the summer sky, 
And in the heavy air, 
The odors and the fruitful heat supply 

Sensation everywhere, 
And zephyrs that caress, and sounds that lull, 
And colors, fill the senses' measure full, 

Blessed is the man whose thoughts from effort cease, 

While pass such golden hours; 
Who saturates his spirit with the peace 

That healing Nature pours, 
A soothing, charming, vivifying flood, 
Through every sense, to prove that life is good. 



109 



NEW YEAR'S, 1900 

/^VNE greeting more to one of noble fame, 
^-^ Our comrade since our birth; our fathers', too: 
Into whose spring-time hopes our grandsires came, 
Whose promises to them for us came true. 

What struggles and what gains have filled his day ! 

What peerless triumphs of a mind set free ! 
What stubborn shrinking, oftentimes, to pay 

The woful birth-price of the is-to-be. 

Hoary, sublime, deathless yet doomed to die, 
No other New Year's dawning his shall be. 

Vouchsafe him, Time, such end that men shall cry, 
"Grand was thy passing, Nineteenth Century !" 



108 



AUGUST 

WHEN vagrant clouds drift in the summer sky, 
And in the heavy air, 
The odors and the fruitful heat supply 

Sensation everywhere, 
And zephyrs that caress, and sounds that lull, 
And colors, fill the senses' measure full, 

Blessed is the man whose thoughts from effort cease, 

While pass such golden hours; 
Who saturates his spirit with the peace 

That healing Nature pours, 
A soothing, charming, vivifying flood, 
Through every sense, to prove that life is good. 



109 



BY THE EVENING FIRE 

I F mothers by their failings were condemned, 
* Oh, what an orphaned planet this would be ! 
That 's not its fate. Their loving makes amend 

For all the tale of their deficiency. 
Though tempers by the long day's cares are tried, 

And sharp words sometimes fall, and tears ensue; 
Though hasty tongues unseasonably chide, 

And little faults look bigger than is true — 
Comes evening and anew with strength equips 

Love's steady current strenuous to bless. 
Smoothed, then, Care's lines by childish finger-tips; 

Cured the heart's pangs by babyhood's caress. 
Clasped in the mother's arms, close to her breast, 
Wrapped in her love, the restful child finds rest. 



110 



THE CHRISTMAS LOVER 

'HPIS love that makes the stars revolve; 

* 'Tis love that makes the world go round. 
This Christmas purpose I resolve 

On earth to make love more abound. 
On me, dear maid, thy love bestow, 
And match my full heart's overflow ! 

Nor gems nor gear to thee I bring; 
Nor gauds nor merchandises rare. 
Love's offerings I may not sing, 
But love itself I have to spare 

In boundless store, and all for thee, 
If but thy heart responds to me. 



Ill 



LABUNTUR ANNI 

LOST man ! Lost man ! 
-* People, have you met him ? 
Idle fellow; loath to delve, 

Indisposed to scheme. 
Liked too well to shirk his task. 
When circumstances let him; 
Loved to sit about and loaf, 

And strum the strings and dream. 

What he dreamt of, Heaven knows ! 

Love and faith and beauty — 
Towers that glittered in the sun — 

Vales of sheltered peace. 
Gone is he this twenty years; 

Baffling all pursuit, he 
Loiters — where ? While fast on me 

The sober years increase. 

Lost man ! Lost man ! 

People, have you met him? 
Meditative-seeming chap of — 

Maybe — twenty-three ? 
112 



LABINTUR A N N I 

Good riddance, very probably, 
And yet I can't forget him. 

I wish I had him back to dream 
My Christmas dream for me. 



113 



TO CELESTINE IN BRAVE 
ARRAY 

QHIELDED and hid by such a panoply; 
^ Garbed for defence; feathered to fortify 

And add to stature; 
Oh, but it seems a far, far cry 

From thee to nature ! 

Bless thy capitulating eyes, whose ray 
Out of this fort of raiment finds a way 

To prove thee human, 
By signals sure, that to my signal say, 

This is a woman ! 



114 



AS SUMMER WANES 

T DROPPED a seed in a cold, cold heart 
* Far back in the early spring; 
I 've tried and tried to make it start, 
Oh, I 've tried like anything! 

The garden flowers that the sun has freed 

With bloom are all areek. 
Ah, when shall a bud from that little seed 

Blush pink in my true love's cheek? 



115 



M 



IRRECONCILABLE 



ALIGNANTS always, they adjust 
Their stings to needs of different days, 



As long as censure harmed, they cussed, 
When praise is hurtfuller, they praise. 



116 



THEY SAY SHE FLIRTS 

HPHEY say she flirts; sore news that she 

^ Should flirt at all and not with me. 
Sam Rogers — so the tale expands — 
Has gone for good to foreign lands, 
And left her free to go and live 
In whichsoever State will give 
Release from matrimonial gyves 
With least display of jarring lives. 
The trouble? Oh, some say Sam beat her. 
But others claim that what's the matter 
Is that he didn't. Some, again, 
Hear rumors about "other men," 
And add, explaining all that 's hid — 
"She flirts; you know she always did." 

Flirt ! Well, perhaps she did, and yet 
It seems too bad that Sam should let 
Such coquetry as hers advance 
To such calamitous mischance. 
Her smiles on mankind to confer 
Comes just as natural to her 
As to the sun in shining mood 
117 



THEY SAY SHE FLIRTS 

To warm the evil and the good. 
Are there not flowers that bloom and blush, 
Sweet-scented, on a thorny bush, 
Whose nature 'tis, not thinking wrong, 
To every bee that comes along 
To give some honey? But for these 
'Twould be short commons for the bees. 
And other splendid blooms there are, 
Gorgeous to gaze on from afar, 
But scentless; ravishing to see, 
But without sweets to tempt a bee. 
Getting a rose, Sam should have grown 
Sharp thorns enough to keep his own, 
Leaving the world some usufruct 
Of sweetness from his rose unplucked. 
Or else, if it were his desire 
That everybody should admire, 
But none appreciate his prize, 
Save by the tribute of their eyes, 
'Twere better if he had become 
The stalk of a chrysanthemum, 
That needs no thorns and safely grows, 
Without alluring bee or nose. 
Poor Sam ! What thorns he had the power 
To grow, have pierced his own sweet flower 
118 



THEY SAY SHE FLIRTS 

Till, of that gracious bloom bereft, 
His thorns are all that he has left. 

Oh, bootless conquest, to be bold 
And win a maid one cannot hold ! 
Oh, wrack to her, and woe and pain, 
To be once won, then lost again ! 
Oh, sharp aforesaid pang, to see 
Her flirt at all, and not with me ! 
One cure for all, and only one — 
To get the whole black snarl undone — 
To call Odysseus back once more, 
Shoo all the suitors from the door, 
And trim the thorns of misplaced score, 
And spray the rose with hellebore, 
And gag the gossips who 'd deplore, 
Or carp at what had gone before ! 
Ah, those were services that would 
Befit a friend, if one but could! 
To stand compassioning her plight 
Avails no jot to set her right. 
Yet far more pleased were I to see 
Her flirt no more, than e'en with me. 



119 



BLANDINA 

OLANDINA'S nice; Blandina's fat; 
■■— " Joyous, and sane and sound and sweet, 
And handsome too, and all else that 
In persons of her years is meet. 
Behold Blandina ! 
She 'a alive, and testifies 
With all the emphasis that lies 
In busy hands and dancing eyes 
That life 's a prize — 
That all the mischief that provokes 
Doubt in the matter lies in folks, 
And that, provided folks are fit, 
Life 's not a failure — not a bit. 

Blandina loves a picture-book, 
Blandina dearly loves a boy; 
She loves her dinner, loves the cook, 

Her nurse, her doll, her brother's toy; 
And best of all she loves a joke, 
And laughs at it. 
And laughing at it testifies 
With all the emphasis that lies 
120 



BLANDINA 

In joyous tones and beaming eyes, 
That life 's a prize — 
That all the mischief that provokes 
Doubt in the matter lies in folks, 
And that, provided folks are fit, 
Life 's not a failure — not a bit. 



121 



AN URBAN HARBINGER 

TN the sweet country, as the spring's 
* Advance decks out the scenery, 
And limns with hues the colored things 
And gives the greens their greenery, 
I love to watch when I am there 
Each little step of Nature's care; 
The wiles with which she goes about 
To coax the shivering crocus out, 
And, day by day, succeeding troops 
Of blooms, to marshal in their groups. 

In town, it 's different ! All 's wrought out 

With least of her complicity, 
By man-power, helped, as I misdoubt, 

By steam and electricity. 
The bed that yesterday was snow 
To-morrow's plants, set all arow; 
You press a button and they blow — 
Just watch them and you '11 see it 's so. 
I 'm told, too, that in open sight 
The park men turn them off at night. 
1^2 



AN URBAN HARBINGER 

You can't rely on city plants, 

Whose habits have been tampered with. 
I always look at them askance. 

Such culture as they 're pampered with 
Might well their little minds upset, 
Confuse their dates, make them forget 
The calendar, their proper times 
As set by use and nursery rhymes — 
All, all, except, come sun, come cold, 
They 're bound to blossom when they 're told. 

I trust them not, but when it 's fair 

I note in garb delectable 
Sophronia driving out for air 

With parent most respectable. 
And when she leaves her furs at home 
I say the season 's ripening some. 
Successive hats, new brought from France, 
Denote to me the sun's advance, 
And, when her parasols appear, 
I cry, "Now bless me ! summer 's here." 



123 



THE CONTEMPORARY SUITOR 

HPIME was that Strephon, when he found 

* A Chloe to his mind, 
Sought not how Dun reported her, 
Nor lagged while Time distorted her, 
But rushed right in and courted her, 
As Nature had designed. 

It 's different now; my Lucy, there, 

How gladly would I woo ! 
But shapes of such monstrosity 
Confront with such ferocity 
My impecuniosity, 

What is a man to do? 

Strephon and Chloe had a hut, 

And though, about the door, 
The wolf might raise his serenade, 
No latter-day menagerie bayed 
Its warning, grim, to man and maid: 

"Wed not if ye are poor!" 

"My goats," might Strephon say, "will yield 
Us milk, our vineyard wine; 
124 



THE CONTEMPORARY SUITOR 

By olive groves my cot is hid, 
No pressing wants our joy forbid, 
And I can always kill a kid 
When people come to dine." 

But I, what monsters must I face 

When I for Lucy sue ! 
What landlords roaring for their rent ! 
What troops of duns by grocers sent, 
And shapes of want and discontent 

Calamitous to view! 

Stay, Lucy, stay ! I 'm bold and stout, 

I '11 rout the grisly crew. 
Be constant, love ! and hope and wait, 
And by the time you 're thirty-eight 
• I may, perhaps, have conquered Fate, 
And when I 've won the right to mate, 
If you 're not too much out of date, 

I '11 surely mate with you ! 



125 



UNCERTAINTY 

K TOW that again the nearing sun slants warm each 
I ^ southern slope on, 

Belinda, of a sudden, leaves the noisy town behind, 
And slowly fares across the fields (with rubbers, let us 
hope, on), 
While shadows on her forehead tell of something on 
her mind. 



What is it in the spring-time drives a maid to meditation ? 
What brings her out to tramp the fields in chosen 
solitude ? 
Some matter of finance, or faith, or heart, or station? 
It must be what would all these four and most things 
else include. 

Oh, what is man, Belinda dear, that you are mindful of 
him? 
Caressed of fortune, can it be there 's anything you 
lack? 
Ay, there 's the rub ! so much to lose — so great a risk to 
love him ! 
And yet, who dares not love may miss what never may 
come back ! 

126 



UNCERTAINTY 

Take heed, Belinda ! Life is long, with many a snare to 
gin him. 
Be sure he 's straight, as gallants go, and sound and 
sane and true; 
Be sure he has withal the saving streak of iron in him 
To make him deaf when sirens sing, and calm when 
notes fall due J 

Wise choice to you, Belinda ! Man 's no easy thing to 
measure, 
For now and then he justifies the shape he 's moulded 
in; 
And then again he doesn't: still, an able woman's lei- 
sure 
May find worse use than steering him, and helping 
him to win. 



127 



ABOUT THE HORSE 

WHAT will not men consent to do 
For to improve the horse's breed, 
And make him comelier to view, 

And mend his gait and lift his speed ! 
Supreme the work ! Nor time, nor gold, 

Nor skill, nor strategy they stint, 
From long before the colt is foaled 
Until the veteran's final sprint. 

Whatever is there about Horse 

That stirs this tireless zeal in man 
To make him do a stated course 

A little faster than he can? 
The locomotive long ago 

Upset the claim that he was fast; 
On common roads the automo- 

Bile has him hopelessly outclassed. 

Good animal to ride, to plough, 
Or to embellish rural scenes; 

But if you really want to go, 
He isn't in it with machines. 
128 



ABOUT THE HORSE 

And yet the brains of men still buzz 
With zeal the horse's breed to bless, 

And call it bettered when he does 
His mile in half a second less. 

The tracks they build ! the crowds they lure ! 

The Legislatures they enthrall; 
Protesting that their aims are pure, 

And mostly agricultural ! 
Queer, isn't it? that equine weal 

Should seem so geared to human ruth. 
Do men dissemble what they feel ? 

They like a horse-race, that 's the truth. 

They always did; they always will — 

Some of them, anyhow — and risk 
A wager on it, or a spill, 

And reck not, so the pace be brisk. 
Best was the good old rural way, 

Afar from cops and pool-rooms, too, 
When John and James, each in his sleigh, 

Debated what their nags could do. 



129 



THE REVOLT OF THE BONE 

IV A AN being shaped and complete ! 
* » * Shivered as life through him blew; 
Went and got something to eat; 

Then didn't know what to do. 
Sighed the All-wise "But he 's queer! 

He 7Z never manage alone ! 
Some one must give him a steer ! " 

Straightway He fashioned the Bone. 

Bossed man that Bone from the start. 

Teased him and told him and taught; 
Learned him the lines of his part; 

Trained him to do as he ought. 
Till, in his huge self-conceit, 

He set up aims of his own; 
Fancied his mind was complete; 

Learned to disparage the Bone. 

Patient, she bore with his brass; 

Humored him, pampered, endured 
All, till things came to a pass, 

When they just had to be cured. 
130 



THE REVOLT OF THE BONE 

" Won't do his share of the work ! 

I '11 add it then to my own ! 
Power to the drudge from the shirk ! 

Give me my vote ! " said the Bone. 

Scary the outlook for man, 

Warned and defied by the Bone ! 

Let him be good while he can ! 
Woman can go it alone ! 



131 



SPRING FEVER 

I WANT to go to Boston ! There 's something in the 

air — 
The breath of spring; some restless germ unnamed; it 's 

everywhere — 
That somehow makes my spirit loathe all tasks and 

discipline, 
And seasonably stirs it up to bolt the rut it 's in. 

Oh, clang of gongs on cable-cars ! Oh, rattling trains 

o'erhead ! 
Oh, hustle of this driving town! Oh, life too briskly 

sped! 
'Twixt you and me 'twere sweet to put a temporary gap, 
And go and sit awhile in Boston's calm, commodious lap. 

'Tis true, it 's not the town it was some twenty years 

ago, 
For even Boston can't neglect its Yankee right to grow; 
But still, one finds a peerless club just where one found 

it then, 
And gazing out on Beacon Hill those same good Boston 

men. 

132 



SPRING FEVER 

I want to play with them awhile, and hear their Boston 

prate, 
And note their spreading dearth of hair and irksome 

gains in weight; 
And, just as an experiment, there might perhaps be 

tried 
One Boston cocktail's work in an abstemious inside. 

I want to drive on Brookline roads, past homes where 
lives are spent 

In fiscal ease, and sport, and intellectual content; 

And see the Dedham polo sharps their livers' weal pro- 
mote, 

And hear on India wharf the lay that greets the Port- 
land boat. 

Oh, Boston, sweet are your delights, and though they 

may seem vain 
To minds austere, my spirit craves the taste of them 

again. 
Oh, heavenly town when one is tired ! this good one may 

discern 
In you that Heaven has not, since one may taste you, 

and return. 



133 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

1892 

CBEN PYNCHOT was sad, Eben Pynchot was 

J— ' gloomy, 

While it might be a trifle too much to assume he 

Was ready to vacate this vortex of strife, 

There was no denying he didn't like life. 

He had tried it both ways, tried it just as it came, 

And gone out of his way to make of it a game 

Of elaborate methods and definite plan, 

With ends fit to serve as the chief ends of man. 

Either way it seemed now he 'd been chasing a bubble, 

And the fun he had had hardly paid for the trouble. 

First trying it poor, with his living to work for, 
He had used as much strength as he had to exert for 
That purpose and stopped there; not that he was lazy, 
But going without to him always came easy, 
And he greatly preferred to have less and economize, 
With a mind free to meditate, read, or astronomize, 
Than to hustle, with due acquisition of dross, 
But with no mind for aught except profit or loss. 

134 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

" In his work," said his boss, " he 's a youth to be counted on 
Very much as you 'd trust to a clever automaton, 
But for all that he cares for commercial adventure, he 
Would go through the same daily round for a century." 

For a while once he did show some symptoms of go 
That promised in time into "business" to grow; 
He worked overtime, and his questions betrayed 
Such a wish to discover how money was made 
That his increase of zeal by his owners was noted 
And he stood on the sharp edge of being promoted, 
When his eagerness all of a sudden dispersed 
And he lapsed into just what he had been at first. 
It was never explained, but it seemed to come pat 
That Miss Blake married Rogers the June after that. 

'Twas the following spring that his great-uncle Eben, 
Whose toil in "the Swamp" long had lucrative proven, 
Caught a cold riding home insufficiently clad 
And promptly developed the prevalent fad. 
"Pneumonia; age much against him," 'twas whispered. 
His life had been frugal and leather had prospered. 
The will spattered off at the start with bequests 
To cousins, and colleges, hospitals, rests 
For the wayworn, old servants, familiars, and clerks, 

135 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

Till it showed a round sum gone for love and good works. 
"All of which," it ran on, "being paid with due care, 
Being still of sound mind, I appoint and declare 
Eben Pynchot, my nephew and namesake, to be 
Of the whole of the residue sole legatee." 

"His nephew! Don't know him," Executor Willing 

said. 
"Never heard of him!" echoed Executor Hollingshed. 
"Was here at the funeral," said Executor Prince, 
"I saw him, but haven't laid eyes on him since. 
Never mind, he '11 turn up." But all three of them 

guessed 
That his share would be small after paying the rest. 

Then came the post-mortem. The trio selected to 
Operate found what they hadn't expected to. 
The autopsy dazed them. A simple tin box, 
Excised from behind a Trust Company's locks, 
Developed securities in lots and varieties 
So ample and with such regard for proprieties 
In the matter of dividends, that those worthy men 
Sat speechless till, getting their wind back again, 
An admission each gasped in such voice as he could 
Of how old Eben's worth had been misunderstood. 

136 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

"That young man is well off," said Executor Willing; 
"Eight millions in pocket as sure as a shilling." 
Mused Executor Prince: "Nearer twelve, I should say, 
And he 'd better be sent for without more delay." 

He took it all calmly, incredulous first, 

Then wonder-eyed, lastly resigned to the worst. 

Being quit of the need to beg, labor, or rob, 

He made sure of the facts and then threw up his job, 

Bought a sharp, shining shears fit his coupons to sever, 

And regarding himself done with labor forever, 

Set out with serene disposition to measure 

What profit might lie in existence at leisure. 

Five years passed, they left him well on in his twenties, 

But still to his new trade a willing apprentice; 

Deliberate still in his manner, and spare 

In his frame, fitly dressed and with not too much care, 

Eating all things and drinking all freely, and yet with 

The sort of instinctive discretion that 's met with 

In monkeys, and men who from testing it find 

That less fun with the gullet means more with the 

mind. 
For he realized young that though houses may burn 
And be built again finer, and jewels return 

137 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

That were lost, and a fortune misused be replaced 
By a windfall in spite of inordinate waste, 
And a man's very ancestors sometimes may be 
Swapped off, a job lot, for a fresh pedigree, 
Though his babes he may shift too, and even his wife, 
The stomach he starts with stays by him through life; 
And too much or too little care what he shall put in it 
Is likely to leave him at last with his foot in it. 

Five years he had travelled, by gradual stages 

Finding out what a million a year in this age is, 

And inuring himself to the startling effects 

Wrought by gold on deposit responsive to checks. 

Circumventing the globe on a track loosely planned, 

He had got some idea of the lay of the land, 

Supplementing the same with deliberate diligence 

By study of people and human intelligence. 

Wise men and wise virgins and fools of all statuses, 

Promoters, scamps, anarchists, young Fortunatuses, 

Russian princes, dukes, beggars, lords, common Cook's 

tourists, 
Diplomatists, gamblers, mind-readers, faith-curists, 
Grooms, couriers, mandarins, pashas, bagmen, colonels, 
Professors, cads, spendthrifts, correspondents of jour- 
nals, 

138 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 



He had rubbed against all of them and hundreds more too, 
Getting aspects of life from diverse points of view. 
Pall Mall, Piccadilly, Bois, Boulevard, Corso 
Had grown trite to his eye as Fourteenth Street, or 

more so. 
The famed bank of Neva, each Ringstrasse mart, 
The paths Unter Linden, he knew all by heart. 
Duly vouched for in letters of forceful variety, 
He had dabbled two seasons in London society. 
A house in Park Lane had disputed his stay 
With a suite that he kept in the Rue de la Paix. 
The Derby those years 'twas worth doing, to see 
The swells on his drag: ditto more at Grand Prix. 
On a stem-winder yacht in the Mediterranean 
He had cruised in such guise as Jove visited Danae in, 
Putting in at his whim where there chanced to appear a 
Fete worthy to share in the bright Riviera; 
Waking up Monte Carlo by way of a prank, 
By testing new methods of breaking the bank; 
Storing Venice, her stones and canals, in his memory, 
The Bosporus cleaving, romantic and glamoury; 
Then the Nile, thence Suez, by his craft percolated, 
Let him in on the East with a mind not yet sated: 
Bombay and Colombo, Calcutta and Delhi, 
Simla, Bangkok and Singapore, Canton and Shanghai, 

139 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

Tientsin and Pekin, and flowery Japan 
Had all fitted into his nebulous plan. 
Seeing all that he might and inferring the rest, 
He had drifted on, gaining, with modified zest, 
Much lore of carved ivory, lacquers and pottery, 
Theosophy, Buddhism, jade, gems, and tottery 
Shrines, flavored all by things mentioned or written 
By the all-supervising, ubiquitous Briton. 

Nor had he neglected that signally filling 
Device known as "sport," euphemistic for killing. 
Constrained by the vogue that that pastime secures, 
He had bagged countless pheasants, stalked deer on 

Scotch moors, 
Chased foxes on horseback, tracked Muscovite bears, 
Met tigers at home in their Bengalese lairs, 
And capped African beasts with assorted quietuses, 
From lions and elephants down to mosquitoeses. 
Discerning how great and how cheap is the credit 
Accorded to blood, he continued to shed it, 
Till his mentors admitted he couldn't do more, 
And Phil Armour himself wasn't deeper in gore. 

So, too, horse. Though his globe-trotting didn't permit 
Him to feel for that beast the concern he is fit 

140 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

To awaken in man, he became with his looks 

Well acquainted enough to know withers from hocks; 

And if all of his good points he couldn't detect, 

He acquired at the least an unstinted respect 

For a brute in whose structure one great end in view 'tis 

To help idle men to exist without duties. 

Exhausting at last the incentives to roam, 
Eben gathered his trophies and turned toward home. 
Despatching his yacht her own passage to work, 
He sailed on a "liner" himself for New York, 
And arrived, duly sanctioned that town to possess 
By that title unchallenged, a London success. 
In due time joining clubs and his birthright renewing 
He got some idea what his fellows were doing, 
And ventured to make his desire understood 
To share their proceedings as far as he could. 
Obtaining a villa not too far away 
He put himself up there, not meaning to stay 
By himself, but desiring some haven to fly to 
When he wanted to think, or had reason to try to. 
On the Hudson it stood, on whose fresh-water tide 
His boat lay prepared to vex waters untried 
Any moment her owner whim-prompted might happen 
To step on her deck with his wishing (sea) cap on. 

141 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

In a couple more years by more long-distance gadding, 
Whenever one place or one crowd got too madding, 
He 'd conversant become with this land's superficies 
And the palpable traits of American species. 
Playing polo at Newport and coaching at Lenox, 
Mount Desert's hazards daring unshattered, and then oc- 
Cidentally threading the fresh-water seas, 
Thence off to the land of hot springs and big trees, 
Adding big-horns and elk to the list of his slaughtered, 
Back to bow to she-Patriarchs, bejewelled, bedaugb- 

tered, 
Watching Congress dispute through a Washington win- 
ter, 
Leading germans the pace of a misapplied sprinter — 
It was fun, but for all it diverted and pleased 
Eben Pynchot, it left in him, all unappeased, 
A gnawing distrust of how long to beguile 
Life by dodging its problems was really worth while. 
So back to that villa he had on the brink 
Of the Hudson he drifted and paused there to think. 

He took time to it; building a little and planting, 
Assorting the fruits of his wide gallivanting, 
Disposing his porcelains, pictures, and bric-a-brac 
(Hitherto jumbled out helter-skelter and pick-a-back). 

142 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

So that other collectors, inspecting his plunder, 

Might covet his bits with due envy and wonder; 

That his Japanese swords, when his rivals should call on 

'em, 
Might stir in them desperate longings to fall on 'em; 
That his peachblows and sang-de-boeufs, and various 

glazes 
Might rouse into violent mania the crazes 
Of persons whose cherished and costly insanity 
Makes them suitable objects of man's inhumanity. 

Some orchids he got too, not many but curious, 
And a notable lot of chrysanthemums glorious. 
Also horses enough for his uses vehicular, 
And to make spavins, ringbones, diseases navicular, 
Splints, curbs, and most species of equine affection 
Familiar enough to him soon for detection. 
Yet with all of these manifold means of distraction 
He still found time for thought, for the blues, for inac- 
tion. 
The newspapers came with the world's motley annals, 
And into his mind through unfortified channels 
Ran the story of enterprise, effort, success, 
Mishap, want, and failure that reels from the press, 
And stuck there, corroding his lights, and his liver's 

143 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

Performance so marring it gave him the shivers, 
Because with no authorized permit to shirk, 
He was living as quit of humanity's work 
As a grasshopper is, in a June meadow playing, 
Of the trite agricultural duty of haying. 
It was then that his spirits began to succumb 
To that duly hereinbefore hinted at gloom, 
Week by week, month by month, grew his dissatisfac- 
tion 
Till at last came the climax that foreshadowed action. 

"What is it," he mused, "that makes life worth the 

living ? 
Is it endless receiving and spending, or giving? 
Is it lollipops, flapdoodle, horses, and yachts; 
Having pennies to drop in all possible slots ? 
Is it hustle and get-there, the genius for trade 
And commercial combines, by which fortunes are made? 
I never liked that. Was it luck or mishap 
That a fortune without it fell into my lap? 
A bowlder of size has been rolled to the crown 
Of a hill: I can start it and let it roll down. 
If you set a great trap and within my reach bring it, 
No doubt I can jump on the bait-plate and spring it. 
But the question keeps pressing what fellow gets caught — 

144 



EBEN PYNC HOT'S REPENTANCE 

Whose legs the trap shuts on — who is it that 's bought ? 
I 'm not sure, but at odd times I own I opine 
That the limbs that I see held so firmly are mine ! 
Must I keep to the end of the chapter, I wonder, 
This purposeless role of idealized rounder ! 
It is really a good gift that snatches away 
The motives for labor and substitutes play ! 
The fellows that do things and are things attain 
Their lead by hard discipline seasoned with pain. 
Their characters grow by the sort of endeavor 
That seizes on time as a slice of forever. 
It begins just a little to get through my head 
What the grave Seer of Galilee meant when He said 
What he did to that youth who disliked His advice 
And went off disconcerted to pause and think twice. 
If the spirit 's the man, what in thunder 's the use 
Of indulging the senses with pains so profuse 
If the more you indulge them the harder it is 
For the spirit to get what is lawfully his ! 
Not the best behorsed drag can keep up very far 
With a tuppenny cart that is hitched to a star. 
Having fun with one's money 's a good thing to do, 
But how about letting it have fun with you ! 
Mine shall serve, not possess; and unless I can keep 
My place soul end upward, on top of my heap, 

145 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

I vow that by way my defeat to acknowledge 

I '11 dump the whole pile on a Methodist college. ,, 



Eben Pynchot's become a laborious man. 

He went back to work with more purpose than plan, 

And his purpose was no more than this, that he would 

With himself and his pile do the best that he could. 

But he followed the rule, both in person and pelf, 

That who does best for others does best for himself. 

He 's occupied now with an office and clerks, 

Deep in politics, business concerns, and good works. 

Much he gives, but how much, or to whom, or to what, 

Are things that this rhyming deponent learns not. 

Of a dozen great charities yearly one sees 

His name lettered out in the list of trustees. 

He owns model tenements, too, and I know 

Of his trying experiments not long ago 

To see whether a system of loan-shops could thrive 

Where borrowers needn't be quite skinned alive. 

As for politics, knowing that folks can make shift 

To do without help if so be they have thrift, 

But good government's something they can't thrive 

without, 
He does his best efforts to bring that about. 
And he sticks to it so, with such dogged persistence, 

146 



EBEN PYNCHOT'S REPENTANCE 

Such energy here, and again such resistance, 
That I own there are times when I almost prepare 
To see some hall or other run Eben for mayor. 

His liver works better now, thanks to this whirl 
Of industry, and — oh ! besides, there 's a girl ! 
Such a dear ! such a heart ! and such wits ! such a head ! 
Such a hang to her gown ! such a poise of her tread ! 
She has stock in that loan-office scheme I was speak- 
ing of. Eben consults with her four times a week. 
And so arch is her smile and so cheerful his scoff 
That I own I think sometimes they will hit it off. 
'Twould be great luck for Eben if those two should pair, 
For who needs so much help as an arch-millionaire ! 



147 



VERSES OF OCCASION 



RETROSPECTIVELY SPEAKING 

From Life, January, 1893. 

WHEN Life began, experienced persons said: 
"See Lachesis her shears snip that slim thread, 
A line so slender can't protracted be: 
Lo, Punchinello's early tomb ! and see 
Yon tumulus whose cut-off hump declares 
How premature an end was Vanity Fair's. 
Brightness and brevity as surely mate 
As pork and beans. It isn't chance; it 's fate ! 
A few brief months of coruscation, then 
Life will go out." So said experienced men. 

A decade swift since then this Earth has sped, 
And every day has turned things on their head. 
Croakers who moaned "short Life!" themselves have 

died, 
Strong banks have bursted; men whose means defied 
All turns of fortune have been brought to use 
The surer plan of having naught to lose. 
"Assured success" has gone through bankruptcy. 
Merit in partnership with Industry 
Have somehow failed to justify presumption, 

151 



RETROSPECTIVELY SPEAKING 

And draw a salary now, employed by Gumption. 

New journals, solemn, fiscal, economic, 

Religious, newsy, sporty, spicy, comic, 

Diurnal, weekly — every kind you take — 

Have mostly left depression in their wake. 

Still round this world has spun, nor lost a minute, 

And Life — "brief, fitful Life" — Life still is in it. 

Ten times around the freckled orb of day, 
Hebdomadally blazing out the way, 
What a procession of its blessed self 
Stalks through that score of volumes on Life's shelf ! 
What old, old friends perennially appear ! 
What new ones come and go, to chide or cheer ! 
Fair Chloe, both ways drawn, choosing by toss 
'Twixt Strephon's ardor and old Bullion's dross; 
Lucy and Jack kept single by the curse 
Of large requirements and a slender purse; 
The joys ornate in which the rich compete; 
The simple pastimes of a Thompson Street; 
Shanty-bred Romeo's high-flown speeches poured 
Into the infant ears of his adored; 
Cesnola's fragments joined with too much skill; 
The summer-girl, by ennui driven to kill 
Too sluggish hours by stirring with her fan 
152 



RETROSPECTIVELY SPEAKING 

The smouldering passion of the casual man; 

The Sabbatarian, aye obtusely prone 

To estimate the Lord's day as his own; 

The anxious tests the newly married make 

To learn what course two lives when lumped must take; 

In all his uses in recurring course 

That dearest quadruped to man, the horse; 

Dudes, chappies, flunkies, bishops, statesmen, sports; 

Brusque millionaires; professors of all sorts; 

Managing matrons, doctors, perfect dears; 

Prudes, politicians, fortune-hunting peers; 

Prigs, flirts, small boys chock full of devilment; 

Wrong-headed folks who err with good intent; 

Policemen, parsons, all the recurring train 

That cross the boards of time, and come again, 

While down in front in strongest light confer 

The score-score stars of the McAllister. 

Dear hundred thousand friends to whom Life owes 
The vital force by which it lives and grows, 
Your prompt support its infant steps that propped 
And never since has wavered, much less stopped, 
Is still its best possession — its very self — 
Since when that ceases Life goes on the shelf. 
For any good Life has availed to do, 

153 



RETROSPECTIVELY SPEAKING 

The lion's share of praise belongs to you. 

'Twas you that opened Gotham's museum's door 

And helped make Sunday useful to the poor; 

'Twas you, last summer, and your fostering care, 

That gave, through Life, four thousand babes fresh air. 

Your laugh has turned purse-proud Assumption pale, 

Your scornful eyes have seen Imposture quail, 

And driven the bigot skulking from his niche, 

And checked the follies of the idle rich. 

Life, truly, fits the shafts to proper strings, 

But 'tis your hands that give the missiles wings. 

Be still the sun that brings Life's buds to bloom ! 

Forgive its faults; its failings still assume 

To be such griefs as come to every man 

When what he would mismatches what he can: 

Still speed its darts at Folly as she flies; 

Still laugh down ostentation, meanness, lies; 

Still share its mirth; still help its humor's point 

To jab the times where'er they 're out of joint. 

Whate'er befalls this world of greed and strife, 

While Life has you, be sure you shall have Life. 

Let 's keep on trying, without undue fuss, 

To make the world less gloomy, having us. 



154 



LIFE LOQUITUR 

From Life, January 2, 1908. 

\ | O, I am not so young as I was, 
I ^ Not new in the world any more. 
There 's little that any one does 

But I 've seen it done often before. 
If I 've come to observe and reflect, 

If I don't have to wait to be told, 
It 's only what 's right to expect — 

I 'm a full quarter-century old. 

Twenty-five 's no great age, but, dear me ! 

When I pass in review what has been, 
And match up the marvels I see 

With the notable things I have seen, 
And count the good men that ar' n't here, 

And reckon the haps that befell, 
I own, tally woe, tally cheer, 

I 've been hanging around quite a spell. 

Presidents six have I known, 

Chester and Grover and Ben, 
Grover, more requisite grown, 

Back in the White House again, 
155 



LIFE LOQUITUR 

William McKinley twice called, 
In his fifth summer laid low, 

Theodore duly installed, 

And — sakes alive ! Theodore now. 

Good times and bad I 've been through, 

Saw and outlived ninety-three, 
Bryan's first vagaries knew — 

Silver's dire threat to be free. 
Hard combination to beat ! 

Just when the crash seemed in sight, 
Dollar a bushel for wheat 

Won us the Sound Money fight. 

Confidence rising again, 

Straightway prosperity's tide 
Turned and began pouring in. 

Hark ! Was that Cuba that cried ? 
Shrieked to us "Save me from Spain!" 

While we considered our answer 
Down to her doom went the Maine 

In the mud of the Tropic of Cancer ! 

War ! Couldn't stay it then. War ! 
Vain the appeals of outsiders. 
156 



LIFE LOQUITUR 

Bristled the sea and the shore; 

Roosevelt raised the Rough Riders. 
Dewey — Manila Bay — May Day — 

Turn the long page full of lines; 
See us in Glory's huge heyday, 

Stuck with the far Philippines. 

Theodore, master of luck; 

Theodore, marvel of vigor; 
Toe in the stirrup, tongue on the cluck, 

Finger not far from the trigger; 
Eager to swim in the tide's swiftest eddy, 

Fatefully steered on his way there, 
Him in the White House finding already, 

We-all cried: "Theodore, stay there!" 

Every one now must be good, 

No one the laws may ignore, 
Magnates must do as they should, 

Trusts may not hog any more. 
Righteousness garnished with rue ! 

(Hark to the stock-ticker's click !) 
As you 'd be done by, so do ! 

Failing, beware the Big Stick ! 



157 



LIFE LOQUITUR 

So here we are, and p'raps you know 
Where we '11 come out; I don't. 

The yeast 's been working in the dough. 

That 's good, I guess. Oh, yes ! but oh ! 

It 's agitating; differing so 
From old-time use and wont. 

But let it work; so history 's made, 
While we stand by and gape. 

Nor is Time's stormy current stayed 

Because onlookers are afraid. 

When Destiny's big games are played, 
They 're played, and no escape. 

My Gibson girls are mothers now 

Of daughters fair as they, 
And of prospective voters, too: 
Wise voters, doubtless; anyhow 
As wise in prospect, all allow, 

As are their sires to-day. 

A country's strength is in its men; 

Ours are their mothers' sons. 
The breed 's been duly tried, and when 
Have problems stumped it? Duly then 
158 



LIFE LOQUITUR 

We '11 see our problems solved again: 
So history's forecast runs. 

Let 's all be good and trim our sails, 

And hold our courses true; 
For never mind what mischief ails, 
Unless the human factor fails, 
The old God-fearing grit avails 
To pull the patient through. 



159 



LIFE TO HIS FRIENDS 

From Life, January 2, 1913. 

Dear hundred thousand friends to whom Life owes 

The vital force by which it lives and grows, 

Your prompt support its infant steps that propped 

And never since has wavered, much less stopped, 

Is still its best possession — its very self — 

Since when that ceases, Life goes on the shelf. 

For any good Life has availed to do, 

The lion's share of praise belongs to you. 

Let 's keep on trying, without undue fuss, 

To make the world less gloomy, having us! 

PO Life at ten years old, and so the tale 

^ Runs on, trite maybe, but in no wise stale. 

Dear friends, grown now to be a million strong, 

To faithful you the paeans still belong. 

Somehow you 've stuck, through slender and through 

thick, 
And many a hoof have dodged, and many a brick. 
For fifteen hundred weeks and more, your aid 
The mordant forces of decay have stayed, 
At censure blinked and calumny ignored, 
And damned the fatal charge that you were bored. 
Something has held you, comrades; what it was 
Has puzzled experts. What a mortal does 

160 



LIFE TO HIS FRIENDS 

Has always blemishes. Mischance, mistake, 

False inference and misconception, make 

Blots on his record, do the best he may. 

For this, one squad, for that, another, say 

"Out on him !" "Do him up !" "Not fit to live !" 

"No more of him!" and proper orders give. 

But where the vital spark burns really strong, 

That doesn't end it. Still he plods along: 

Scolded, finds balm in thought that many men 

Have many minds, and downed, bobs up again. 

Nothing on Earth 's quite right. Lots of it 's good, 
But nothing goes precisely as it should, 
Nor so near right but that a skilful dab 
Lands near some spot in it that needs a jab. 
Now jabs are what Life's office 'tis to yield; 
Jester and critic, that 's his proper field; 
Not wantonly, nor fiercely, but polite, 
Good-natured, with attentive skill, to bite. 
But, friends, this world of comfortable folk 
Is full, who think a jab or bite 's no joke. 
Respectable and solvent, they make known 
Th' existing order 's good to let alone; 
They like it, faults, absurdities and all, 
And when you bite their end of it, they bawl. 
161 



LIFE TO HIS FRIENDS 

To them, Life's obvious office is to show 

What other fellows think is partly so. 

Perhaps, because you think they should be shown, 

Dear million friends, you never quite disown 

Your faulty, barking Life, so bad, so bold, 

That never would or could do as it 's told. 

No, never ! Do you wonder why ? Demand 

To know its master; then you '11 understand. 

A sense of letters and a sense of art; 

A sense of justice and a decent heart; 

No mule to drive more obstinate than he, 

But on the team he drives a hand so free, 

So light, so sure, controlled by such a wit, 

The driven speed on unconscious of the bit; 

Erroneous, sympathetic, ever young; 

Shrewd like the Pilgrim stock from which he sprung; 

Not fooled by praise, by censure not unnerved, 

Nor yet by Vanity's distraction swerved; 

Free thinker, zealot, Pan, all rolled in one 

And penetrated with a sense of fun 

And breeze of Gaul. You have him ! There 's your 

man! 
Maker of Life the only way he can. 



162 



AD SODALES 

Read at a dinner of the Class of 1877, Harvard College, June 27, 1882. 

IS it a dream? Can it be true 
That we, ungalled by business fetters, 
Four careless years once loitered through, 

Sojourners in the home of letters? 
Beyond a doubt it is a fact 

Well ascertained and well attested: 
The classic shades, though not intact, 
Are still the shades that we infested. 

Across from Holyoke House still bloom 

Horse-chestnut trees with fragrant blossom; 
Old Jarvis Field is still the home 

Of balls, and men who love to toss 'em. 
The shriek of car-wheel rounding curve, 

The listener's blood still duly curdles; 
Their graceful height the elms preserve, 

Oblivious to their tarry girdles. 

And still across the winding Charles 

Come shells, and smells, and rapid barges; 

The Freshman still, in force at Carl's, 
His knowledge of the world enlarges. 
163 



AD SOD ALES 

The Sophomore is still assured 

That wisdom with himself shall perish; 

To Clubs the Junior still is lured; 
Still tender fancies Seniors cherish. 

But yesterday, and we, like these, 

Were nursing our jejune affections, 
And putting in for our degrees, 

And squabbling over class elections. 
That Class Day night, — the window-seat, 

From which all thought of else was banished 
While She sat there, so dear* — so sweet — 

Ah, since that night five years have vanished ! 

Another grinds where once we ground; 

Another loafs where once we idled; 
And others still cavort around 

With spirits — like ours icere — unbridled. 
New fellows now presume to woo 

New girls, whose charms we never wot of; 
New scouts there are and goodies too, 

A whole new world that we are not of. 

But still, when dismal howls the wind, 
And sweeps the rain in gusts and flurries, 
164 



AD SOD ALES 

When he who walks looks not behind 
But turns his collar up and hurries, — 

On certain granite blocks is brought 
To light, an ancient legend,* showing 

Where, in the days we knew, 'twas thought 
The University was going. 

And was it going there, or can 

There truly be a place infernal 
Where Justice takes it out of man 

For transient sins by pains eternal? 
I do not know ! It is not worth 

One's while to disinter dead issues; 
I know that what make Hell of Earth 

Are weakened wills and worn-out tissues.. 

And to these mundane hells, they say, 
The paths that lead at first are cheerful 

And bright, but further on, the way, 
If still pursued, grows dark and fearful. 

It may be some of us did get 

Too far along — I do not say so — 



* Note. — On the front of University Hall appeared one morning the 
inscription, "The University is Going to Hell." It was scrubbed off, 
but is still legible in damp weather. 

165 



AD SODALES 

But — Well ! we '11 do to pray for yet: 
We are survivors: let us stay so. 

The voices of the gentlest tone, 

The truest eyes, and hearts the kindest; 
The minds most conscious of their own 

Shortcomings, and to ours the blindest; 
Ah ! one by one, and year by year, 

Beneath the graveyard's grassy hummocks 
We see them laid, and we meet here, 

Worse men, perhaps, with better stomachs. 

Death, Flaccus says, with equal kick 

Salutes the door of prince and peasant; 
Nor comes he slower or more quick 

If life be burdensome or pleasant. 
'Tis fit that in his steps should tread 

Sweet Charity, the all-forgiving 
Nil nisi bonum of the dead: 

Be all our censure for the living. 

We, who are left, be ours to keep 
Our harnesses from getting rusty; 

What wit we have from going to sleep: 
Our wisdom from becoming musty: 
166 



AD SODALES 

To catch the rein our fellow drops, 
Mount, and in action growing bolder, 

Reck not that at the crupper stops 

His Care with ours, behind our shoulder. 

And though we realize what dross 

And fleeting things our hearts are set on; 
How much of seeming gain is loss; 

How many truths we dare not bet on; 
Regret the protoplastic germs 

That launched us in this higgle piggle, 
And feel ourselves but wriggling worms, 

Still, being worms, — do let us wriggle. 

Who scorns, for aught the world can give, 

To stoop to lie, or trick, or juggle; 
Who knows that he has got to live 

Though only pain rewards the struggle; 
Who nurses to their fullest growth 

The talents to his care committed, 
And runs his race, and nothing loath, 

Be he who may against him pitted, — 

He acts the man, and though the prize 
May not reward his long endeavor; 
167 



AD SODALES 

Though at the goal which lured his eyes 
He comes too late, perhaps, or never; 

Still day by day by what he does 

He forms the fact by which to grade him. 

'Twas not Sardanapalus, 'twas 
Leonidas, whose venture paid him. 



Perhaps your poet's jester's cap 

But ill conceals a care-worn wrinkle; 
The bells he rattles have, mayhap, 

Too, too lugubrious a tinkle; 
Fill then each glass, and join with me 

In wine for just such uses given, 
To whoop her up, with three-times three 

And bumpers all for Seventy-Seven ! 

Our Alma Mater's naughty child, 

Whose conscience never seemed to quicken; 
Whom even now she calls her wild- 

Est, most disreputable chicken: 
Whose conduct with a wish to please 

Had seldom much that was in keeping; 
Who sowed, Ah me ! a lively breeze, — 

Heaven send no whirlwinds for our reaping,- 
168 



AD SODALES 

But grant that while our heads grow cool, 

Our hearts beat still a genial patter; 
That with increased regard for rule, 

And pocketbooks grown somewhat fatter, 
The sluggish mass of things to be 

May find in us a sprightly leaven; 
To make it lighter and more free, 

I give — the Class of Seventy-Seven. 



169 



TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER 

Read at dinner at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Class of '77, 
Harvard College, June 24, 1902. 

TTERE at the top of the divide, 

-I * Sit we together, 

And smile as we look back, 

To mark our tortuous track; 

And sigh to see outspread 

The long down-grade ahead; 

And face the past, and then the coming fate, 

And sigh, and smile; and prate 

Of years long sped and good men gone, 

And drink a glass, and sing another song. 

This being forty-six, or thereabouts, 

Isn't it queer? 

This getting gray and trying to get wise ! 

This seeing younger men lift many a prize ! 

This having boys and girls at seats of learning 

Spending more money than their sires are earning ! 

'Tis not in nature unconcerned to view 

This slipping past the point of going-to-do, 

But glad in gains, our losses we endure. 

There's life left in the old class yet; that's sure. 



170 



TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER 

They say there sits with us, his cheek still ruddy, 
Charles William Eliot's likeliest understudy.* 
Dear, dear; 'twould be a sight to flout the scorner 
To see old Seventy-seven head that corner ! 

Arcadians all, we deprecate all fuss. 

Let Fame sweat on a-keeping tab on us ! 

Let Eighty swell with pride, and cheer and bustle: 

We could have given her odds with Billy Russell ! 

Dear man with thought of him our hearts are moved — 

Of him, and Sigourney, the well-beloved, 

Whose hand and heart and voice in charmed accord 

Brought warmth and mirth and kindness to our board. 

Here, at the top of the divide, 
Sitting together, 
Not at loss shall we repine, 
But sit tight and drink our wine, 
Better wives we couldn't have, 
Better children don't deserve, 
Better men we may be yet, 
Better prizes, maybe, get, 

But whatsoever 
Fate for us may have in store, 

* Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University, 1909. 

171 



TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AFTER 

Be it less or be it more, 
Be it gold or be it lead, 
Be it tail or be it head, 
Be it odd or be it even 
Here's again to Seventy-seven ! 



172 



FIFTY YEARS OLD 

Read at the Class Dinner of Harvard, '77, June 25, 1907. 

IT is not a matter that needs rubbing in, 
* If it hurts anybody it needn't be told; 
It 's only that none of us youths will again 

Be a day less than fifty-and-some thing years old. 

Don't want to, say I; it 's a wonderful age. 

Good as new. And so many sound reasons to praise it. 
Soft end of the job and big end of the wage, 

And all the good work you 've done counting to raise it. 

It 's true that disbursements with winnings agree. 

That 50-year incomes have suckers to suit. 
That 's nothing. What profits a fifty-year tree, 

If not to give shade and yield adequate fruit? 

Such valuable folk as are fifty years old ! 

Such burdens they carry, such currents they stem ! 
It 's good to be of them and help to uphold 

The chin of a world that might sink, but for them. 

Sodales, who thirty years since became men, 

Aspiring to reach what their fingers might clutch, 

173 



FIFTY YEARS OLD 

Ahead still our gaze is, intently as then. 

We hope, we desire, we aspire just as much. 

But this is the difference: Our own future then 
Enlisted our hopes and aroused our misgivings; 

What calls to us now is the new race of men, 

Our sons and our daughters, their fates and their liv- 
ings. 

God bless them ! We give them the best that we Ve got — 
Young hearts bound to ours on the old human plan, 

Coming now, squad by squad, year by year to the spot 
Where we stood erstwhile when our friendship began. 

We coddle them, counsel them, settle their bills; 

To prosper their running we sweat and we strive. 
They follow, as we did, the bent of their wills. 

They don't do what we did. I guess they '11 survive. 

Bend, bend your backs, brothers, the spine 's in them 
still. 
Being fifty years old is the grandest thing yet; 
The age of wise service, of disciplined will, 

When the heart does not change, nor the stomach 
forget; 

174 



FIFTY YEARS OLD 

When prudence her lessons has taught and got through; 

When choices are settled and courses defined; 
When what we are doing is what we should do, 

And fifty years back of us drive from behind. 

The age of arrival, of wisdom, of light, 

Of passion grown pale by affection supplanted; 

When men know enough to go home when it 's night, 
And get — when they do — what they ought to have 
wanted. 

Not so young as we were, but still passable men; 

Not so aged that all of our story 's yet told. 
Come, whoop her up, brothers, be juniors again ! 

There 's lots of life left in us fifty years old. 



175 



THE KINGDOM, THE POWER, 
AND THE GLORY 

Read before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa at Cambridge, June 30, 1898. 

WHEN forth the shepherd boy in Elah's vale 
To meet Goliath fared, no coat of mail 
Nor sword nor spear he took, nor anything 
Except one little penny-dreadful sling. 
His pebble sped. The big Philistine's fall 
Gave humble means a license once for all, 
And helps your bard a warrant to construe 
To launch light verse at learned men like you. 

Masters of erudition, chosen sirs, 

Whose knowledge close with all that 's known concurs, 

Who taste all fruits on wisdom's tree that grow — 

After all 's said, what do we need to know ? 

Knowledge is power. What knowledge? Power for 

what ? 
To do, or not to do? To have, or not? 
Shall learning make our hearts or pockets stout ? 
Bring things, or teach us how to go without? 
Prompt us to spare, or qualify to spend? 
Is it a means, or shall it be an end? 

176 



THE KINGDOM, THE POWER 

All day the Hindoo sits and contemplates 
His navel. Earth spins onward while he waits. 
No loss of time his brooding hope concerns; 
His concentrated thought serves all his turns — 
His food, the least that soul and body joins; 
His raiment, but the clout about his loins. 
To think is all he asks; indeed, it 's more — 
He only seeks to keep an open door 
Whereinto may perhaps in time be turned 
A consciousness transcending all things learned. 
Heedless of force, oblivious to fact, 
Broken of every wish or power to act, 
Under his bo-tree, rapt, behold him sit, 
A patient mark for wisdom's darts to hit. 

In violent, prodigious contrast, view 
Our devotee who lives to put things through ! 
Intense in aim, tremendous in attempt, 
He dares such feats as wizards might have dreamt. 
Prompt from a bed too briefly kept he springs 
To giant struggles with material things. 
He wrests from earth her treasures and her fruits, 
Stays time, and grubs up distance by the roots. 
Titanic in his hands' resourceful play, 
He fits to needs, a thousand leagues away, 
177 



THE KINGDOM, THE POWER 

Supplies extorted by his conjuring brain 

From mine and factory, forest, sea, and plain. 

As nature's secrets, yielded one by one 

To searching science, meet the revealing sun, 

His hail exultant glorifies the hour 

That still extends the boundaries of his power. 

To have, to hold, to shift, to give and take, 

And from each transfer still a profit make — 

That is his life; we watch him and admire, 

Yet envy not his toil nor grudge his hire. 

To each his task: our civilization's need 
Includes things as diverse as love and greed — 
As brooding thought and bustling energy — 
As abstract truth and prompt utility. 
His right to earth is best who best can use it; 
His birthright man must justify or lose it. 
This we should learn, then, and to this end strive, 
Living to keep continuously alive, 
And daily meet the debt we owe the day — 
That irksome, wholesome debt, to make it pay. 
Call us utilitarian those who will, 
A warrant for our Yankee impulse still 
Stands in the immemorial decree 
That linked with labor human life shall be. 
178 






AND THE GLORY 

For liberty and progress, hand in hand 

With pushing thrift, have gone in many a land, 

And mastery of earth and nature brings 

The key to endless stores of precious things. 

Wealth earned, not filched, power not usurped, but based 

On freemen's choice, are mighty tools that, placed 

In fitting hands, spread civilization's sway, 

And speed the dawning of millennium's day. 

Be honor, then, to him who makes the field 
To wiser tillage fuller harvests yield; 
Who harnesses the lightning, and constrains 
Indocile steel to save the fingers pains; 
Who teaches us new wants, and, turn about, 
Supplies these things we cannot do without, 
And makes us hope, so much do wares abound, 
There '11 some time be enough to go around. 

To those devoted souls be honor, too, 
Who steadfastly the quest for truth pursue; 
Who, rifling history's treasure-house, forecast 
The future's hopes and perils from the past; 
Who seek creation's darkest depths to plumb — 
What man has been, and is, and may become, 
Whence brought, and by what trail, and whither bound, 

179 



THE KINGDOM, THE POWER 

Asking, they wrest its secrets from the ground, 
The depths of earth and sea, the celestial vault, 
They dredge and sift and span in an assault 
So fierce and steady that the hosts of night 
Fall ever back before its fervent might, 
And Sol each morning rises with a shout, 
Surprised at what those fellows have found out. 

But honor more be his whose instincts own 
The truth, "Man cannot live by bread alone" — 
Who sees in righteousness, far more than wealth, 
The prime essential to a nation's health; 
Whom neither ease, nor quest, sublime or base, 
Makes inconsiderate of his brother's case; 
Whose effort is, come plenty or come dearth, 
God's will to learn, and see it done on earth. 
A lack of sturdy men whose aims are high 
No surging tide of plenty can supply. 
Doomed is the state, whatever its avails, 
Where probity falls down and conscience fails. 
Not gold nor iron, grain nor ships nor coal, 
Can make a nation great that lacks a soul. 

This above all, then, brethren, we should know, 

How by our growth to make our country grow 

180 



AND THE GLORY 

In that true glory whose foundations lie 

In justice, freedom, and integrity — 

Our country whose we are, and in whose fate 

Our stake is so immeasurably great, 

Whose honor ours involves, her fame our fame, 

Her misdirection our remorse and shame. 

Manila's guns, reverberating still, 

Witness how well her sons can do her will. 

Beleaguered Cuba's marching hosts attest 

How swells the love of freedom in her breast. 

Whate'er befall, God grant her flag may fly 

In sign of righteousness and liberty, 

Ne'er at ambition's beck to be unfurled 

In triumph o'er the weaklings of the world, 

Ne'er borne in battle save in mercy's cause 

To spread the realm of peace and honest laws ! 

May Heaven, who gave us strength, give wisdom too, 

Our duty teach us, and what not to do; 

And so on force may moderation wait — 

So match our men of war, our chiefs of state — 

That the chief fame our victories shall produce 

May be the high renown of victory's use. 

So be our arms, our flag, our future blest — 

God save the Great Republic of the West ! 



181 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

Read at the Harvard Club Dinner, New York, 1900. 



T WEN 

1 I'll 



WENT down East to a football match; great game; 
go again. 
There played a chap they called McBride, who had the 

strength of ten, 
And divers more, whose names I miss, but they seemed 
to be all good men. 

Thirty men or thereabouts competed there that day. 
Thirty thousand anxious souls observed their urgent 

play. 
All Harvard went prepared to yell; all Harvard stayed to 

pray. 

Bless me, how those lusty youths toiled round that 

leather sphere, 
Lined up, rushed, tackled, bucked, and strove with ardor 

most severe, 
While earnest lads in moving tones besought the crowd 

to cheer ! 

182 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

Governors, senators, ministers, judges, presidents of 

banks, 
College presidents, mothers of families, matrons and 

maids, on ranks 
Of benches steeple-high, sat round and watched those 

football cranks. 

I sat next to a mossy fossil, forty years old, named Jim. 
Neither one of us knew the game, but we went with 

purpose grim 
— Yet humble too — to see the show and learn — if it took 

a limb. 

"They say it's dangerous!" said I, but he said, "I 
don't care; 

We '11 get back seats. I understand there '11 be police- 
men there." 

So there we sat and viewed the whole preposterous 
affair. 

It turned out safe enough for us, and as for those young 
chaps 

Who played, they all made nothing of astonishing mis- 
haps, 

Enduring superhuman-seeming strains without collapse. 

183 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

They 'd kill a player frequently, and on his corpse would 
pile 

A score of them, and then pile off, and he 'd get up and 
smile, 

And kick the ball; the blessed crowd all hollering mean- 
while. 

A player 'd get the ball and run; another, just as 

fleet, 
Would grab him passing, ankle-high, and throw him 

forty feet. 
He 'd land upon his head, but still continue to compete. 

"Sure that one's dead," I 'd cry; and Jim — "What 

odds ! there 's plenty more. 
What stubborn brutes those Yale men are ! WTiy can't 

our chappies score?" 
"Hi! Daly 's got the ball! Now go! Down? Bless me ! 

What a bore!" 

Our beings to their cores were stirred that day by those 

young men, 
Egregious heroes doing stunts far too sublime for pen. 
Down to Yale's one-yard line they fought; Yale fought 

them back again. 

184 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

"And all that work and no one's game !" sighed I as we 

turned away. 
"They jolly well got their exercise, you bet," said Jim, 

"this day. 
In the strenuous life 'tisn't wins that count, so much as 

how hard you play. 

" Don't bother about what 's gained, or whether you wal- 
lop the proper man. 

In the strenuous life, to do hard things in the hardest 
way is the plan, 

And to keep the biggest possible crowd as crazy as ever 
you can." 

"Poor liver-saddened old croak," said I, "whose thews 

have lost their power; 
Whose muscles are soft and his spunk collapsed, and his 

spirit subdued and sour, 
Grand is strife of the strenuous life, and the world's 

best hope in this hour!" 

" Granny ! " said he, " those were fine young lads, and 

vigorous through and through. 
They put commendable snap, I own, in the singular 

things they do. 

185 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

Still granting a sport is a right good sort, need we make 
it religion too? 

"Must we add to the cross we 've had so long another 

upright pole, 
And shove the bar along a bit, till it 's what they call a 

goal, 
And say you must drive between the posts as you hope 

to save your soul? 

"There 's more to life than hustling, man, though hus- 
tling has its place, 

There 's virtue in contentment still; tranquillity 's a 
grace; 

According to his legs and lungs, must each man set his 
pace." 

I 've thought about it often since, and doubtless shall again. 

The strenuous life 's a tip-top thing, I guess, for strenu- 
ous men 

Whose necks are short, and whose heads are hard, and 
who have the strength of ten. 

They 're skittish creatures anyhow; unless they have 
due vent 

186 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

We '11 have them putting up on us with maybe good 
intent, 

Hair-raising jobs, to which we could not possibly as- 
sent. 

To get them in between the shafts and let their shoul- 
ders feel 

The public load, 's a scheme that well to prudence may 
appeal. 

While we, the timid, stand by to clamp on brakes and 
shoe the wheel. 

Our strenuous friends who can't be cured, let them be 

strenuous still. 
If they '11 be strenuous to our taste, we '11 cheer them 

to their fill, 
And plank our dollars duly down to pay their long, long 

bill. 

But as for us, the meek and mild, our racket 's to ad- 
here, 
To docile virtue's modest path, nor let ambition queer 
Our sense, nor ever lure us off a strenuous course to 
steer. 

187 



THE STRENUOUS LIFE 

To pose as strenuous half a day, and spend a week in 

bed 
Would never do; we 'd lose our jobs; our babes would 

wail unfed. 
Better to save our puny strength to earn our daily bread. 

About one strenuous man to every thousand folks is 

right. 
Five hundred lean and vigilant to keep him aye in sight; 
Five hundred fat to sit on him hard when he happens 

to want to fight. 



188 



WHAT FOR? 

Read at the Harvard Dinner in New York, January 31, 1908. 

WHAT do we go to Harvard for? 
What is it all about? 
Our fathers knew of something there 
They thought it worth our while to share; 
Something we think our boys can't spare, 
So they go, too; and all the more 
The riddle presses "What 's it for?" 
What 's in Harvard that men misdoubt 
'Twere futile thrift to do without? 

Wisdom 's there for youth to get: 

Follies galore to do. 
Did ever youth learn wisdom yet 

But glanced at Folly too? 
Between the covers of books 

Stands knowledge in noble store, 
But it 's not all there; it 's everywhere: 
And to learn to know its looks, 

And find, and use it more and more, 

Is what we go to Harvard for. 
189 



WHAT FOR? 

To get in touch with many men, 

And to get close up to a few: 
To make wise marks with a doubtful pen; 

And to guess, and have it come true. 
To learn to make food and drink 

With labor and mirth agree; 
To learn to live, and learn to think; 

And to learn to be happy though free — 

These at Harvard seek our Youth, 

Nor in their seeking fail. 
And they gain betimes the vision of truth; 

And they play some games with Yale. 
If they don't 'most always win, 

The reason 's easily shown; 
The board at home 's so rich in fare 
They can't get hungry enough to care 
With due concern and enough despair, 

Who gets contention's bone. 



190 



TO PRESIDENT LOWELL 

Read at the Harvard Dinner in New York, January 28, 1910. 

r^EAR Sir, to this aspiring town 
^— ' That bursts its belt off every year, 
And, paved with shekels, thrusts its crown 
Aye to the stars more near, 

Thrice welcome ! First, because you 're you, 
And next, because you 're Harvard's chief, 

And third — there 's something you might do, 
We think, for our relief. 

The buildings here have grown so tall, 
They somehow tend to dwarf the men. 

Ere Harvard graduates seem small, 
Please stock us up again ! 

The West, the South, the Nor-nor-west, 
South-west, and all the hungry East, 

Keep dumping in on us their best 
To share our civic feast. 

From Ind. and Wis. and Mich, and Minn., 
The Slope, the Rockies, and the Soo, 
191 



TO PRESIDENT LOWELL 

And eke from Texas, folks surge in, 
To show us how; and do. 

Ohio man and railroad king, 

Miner and steel man, men with rolls, 
Smart men from everywhere here bring 

Their wits to try our souls. 

If Harvard's chin 's to be upheld 
In this competing flood of powers, 

Some special orders must be filled, 
And this, please, Sir, is ours. 

Oh Dr. Lowell, train and teach 

And send, oh, send, to help us here, 

High minds, bold hearts, with gift of speech 
Preferred, and vision clear. 

One Joseph Choate each twenty year, 

One Carter every twenty too, 
And once a cycle should appear 

A Roosevelt; one will do. 

More Huntingtons — we need them sore, 
To train the town in works of grace — 
192 



TO PRESIDENT LOWELL 

More Beamans, Baldwins, Bulls, and more 
McKims to deck its face. 

"More of the same," our order runs — 
The same old stock that must not fail, 

Articulate with speech or guns, 
To make the truth prevail. 

Articulate to balk the swine, 
To call the money-mad to heel, 

To make an old tradition shine, 
And back up faith with zeal. 



193 



THE OLD STOCK 

Read at the Harvard Dinner in New York, March 24, 1911. 

NOW in the shade for a moment's space reposes 
(This is just a figure for he 's on another ramp), 
He who but lately was his country's Moses, 

Fetching us along on the road we 've got to tramp. 

What Harvard hand shall be next to grasp the throttle ? 

What Harvard voice the rising faiths expound? 
Who in the corner hold the sponge and bottle 

While our democracy fights another round? 

Old are the issues, known since time's beginnings, 
Right of man and right of thrift drifting into strife; 

Right of the bold to have and hold his winnings; 
Right of the worker to keep his hold on life. 

Need is of men, who, all men's needs discerning, 
Practise to make come peaceably what must; 

Lovers of men, whose love is armed with learning; 
Leaders of men, whose wisdom men can trust. 

Not so much heroes we need as steady drivers, 

Handy with brakes when there 's peril in our speed; 
194 



THE OLD STOCK 

Frompt to yield a fair half the road to all and divers; 
Stubborn with a stiffened back against stampede. 

Such men as he we lately lost and mourn for,* 
Rugged and bountiful, bold and wise to plan, 

Strong in the faith and the service he was born for, 
Stanch for the weal and honor of the clan. 

Stock of the Puritans, from ocean spread to ocean, 
111 be the time when your consecration fails ! 

Now when these rival needs threaten such commotion, 
Whose hand than yours should truer hold the scales ! 

Years, years ago your fathers built a cradle; 

Rocked in it all of us, drew us to their heart; 
Down into wells of truth freely dipped the ladle; 

Gave us to drink and made us of themselves a part. 

Heirs of the Puritans, compact of their spirit, 

Nursing in liberty strong souls of men, 
Proof against hysteria and never used to fear it, 

Yours be to make the old flame blaze again. 

Ill wins the winner who tramples on his fellow, 
Sore are the gains that no service done redeems; 

*J. J. H., ob., January 5, 1911. 
195 



THE OLD STOCK 

Futile must still be the demagogue, his bellow, 

Save when the grafter has carried through his schemes. 

Curbs for the grasping, then, but chances for the able, 
Cheers for the faithful, whatever task they find; 

Men can't be fortunate nor institutions stable, 
Save as they do their part in lifting up mankind. 

Out on the sky-line there, looms our flying Dutchman. 

Sharp-eyed for tasks that other hands neglect; 
No duty 's safe for us to shirk with any such man 

Warning the negligent what to expect. 



196 



THIRTY YEARS AGO 

Read at Phillips Academy, Andover: Commencement, June 27, 1900. 

WE learned some Latin thirty years ago, 
Some Greek; some other things — geometry; 
Baseball; great store of rules by which to know 

When thus was so, and if it was so, why. 
And every day due share of pie we ate, 
And Sunday under hour-long sermons sate. 
And thrived on both; a sound New England diet, 
A.nd orthodox. Let him who will decry it. 

We spoke our Latin in the plain old way. 

Tully was Cicero to Uncle Sam, 
And Caesar, Caesar. Footballs in our day 

Were spheres of rubber still. When autumn came 
We kicked them, chasing after; but the sport 
Was a mere pastime, not at all the sort 
Of combat — strenuous, Homeric, fateful — 
Whence heroes now wrest glory by the plateful. 

The higher criticism was an infant then. 

Curved pitching had not come, nor yellow shoes, 
Nor bikes, nor telephones, nor golf, nor men 

In knickerbockers. No one thought to use 
197 



THIRTY YEARS AGO 

Electric force to haul folks up a hill. 
We walked, or rode on Concord coaches still. 
Expansion's quirks stirred then no fiercer tussles 
Than such as vexed the growing vogue of bustles. 



Girls then, as now, to seminaries went, 

But not so much as now to colleges. 
The female understanding's scope and bent 

Was thought to crave a round of 'ologies 
Less full than man's. We 've learned, it seems, since 

then 
That women need whatever 's good for men, 
And that, though boys are tough and girls more ten- 
der, 
Knowledge is power, without regard to gender. 

The shade austere of Puritan restraint 

Showed sharper outlines, may be, then than now. 

But not to hurt. For now the old complaint 
Of joys curtailed gives place to wonder how, 

'Twixt stress of sports and pleasant things to do, 

And waxing claims of growing knowledge, too, 

The modern lad gets time to feel the joy 

It was, and still must be, to be a boy. 
198 



THIRTY YEARS AGO 

A checkered joy ! Progress is man's desire. 

And boys progress with swifter strides than men 
To greater changes. Little boys aspire 

To bigness, and it comes; nor turn again 
Regretful eyes toward childhood. To grow strong, 
x\nd apt, and swift; to learn; to press along 
Up life's first steeps and glory in each rise — 
That 's boyhood, as it seems to older eyes. 

Time dwarfs the bulk of most material things. 

The giants of our youth less monstrous seem, 
Its wonders shrink when wider knowledge brings 

The great world's standards to amend our dream. 
But youth itself to backward glances looms 
Up bigger than it is. The boy assumes, 
To eyes that comprehend, the form and place 
That gathering years may summon him to grace. 

And what place is it he should strive to gain? 

What ends achieve, to what his powers apply? 
The same old simple precepts still obtain 

That served for all men fit to pattern by. 
Dear lads, we say, the greatest thing on earth 
Is service: that 's what justifies our birth. 
Life can't be made worth living to a shirk. 
You can't have even fun, unless you work. 

199 



THIRTY YEARS AGO 

Go make your bodies strong, your minds alert; 

Train both to do for you the most they can. 
Life's goal no runner reaches by a spurt; 

Doing the daily stint 's what makes the man. 
And making men is Nature's chief concern; 
For right men bring things right, each in its turn. 
Strive, then, to help yourselves, and, that much learned, 
Help others; nowise else contentment 's earned. 

Oh, money 's good to have, and fame is sweet, 

And leisure has its use, and sport its joys. 
Go win them, if you may, and speed your feet ! 

But this regard: that even splendid toys 
Are only toys: the important thing 's not play, 
But work. Who shun the burden of the day 
Shall miss as well the strength they gain who bear it — 
The fellowship they only feel who share it. 



200 



THE PRUDENT FARMER 

Read at the Dinner of the University Farmers' Club, 1906. 

A LL farmers who have grown discreet 
"**■ Have offices on William Street, 

Or Broad will do — 
And farms accessible and green, 
Where air is pure and water clean, 

And with a view. 

This city life 's not everything 
Of which a poet likes to sing. 

It cramps a man, 
And drives him hard and wears his nerves; 
He wants no more of it than serves 

To push his plan. 

A share of it won't hurt him much; 
It profits him to keep in touch 

With other guys. 
To mark the upshot of their strife 
And get some of it for his wife 

Is not unwise. 
201 



THE PRUDENT FARMER 

But to be always hunting loot — 
What sort is he that that can suit? 

Out on the cuss ! 
Ding-dong down-town and rush about, 
And ding-dong back. Perpetual rout 

And ceaseless fuss ! 

To such the ticker's baneful click 
Sounds sweeter than the rippling creek, 

Or eke the birds. 
The office buildings' tottering height 
Beats hills in his distorted sight. 

He passes words ! 

The disconnected farmer man 
Has this defect about his plan, 

That average fields 
Exact attentions more profuse 
Than profitable to produce 

Reluctant yields. 

If you would long the country praise 
Don't live too much on what you raise. 

That way 's not best. 
But let the city do its share, 
202 



THE PRUDENT FARMER 

The country furnish sun and air, 
The town the rest. 

Or mix your crops. Like one I knew 
Who planted roots that duly grew, 

And went to town, 
And laid him in a thousand shares 
Of Anaconda, bought from bears 

For salting down. 

He phosphatized his roots. They did 
Uncommon well. The stocks lay hid 

Waiting advance, 
Till roots and stocks becoming dear 
He made a hundred thousand clear 

On those two plants. 

Farming 's a gamble. I don't say 
That roots will always act that way, 

But when they do, 
It 's apt to be because combined 
With city products of a kind 

To pull them through. 

So every farmer that *s discreet 
Hangs out his sign on Nassau Street, 
203 



THE PRUDENT FARMER 

Or Pine or Wall— 
And what the farm denies his sweat 
He works his wits in town to get, 

Nor grieves at all. 



204 



THE AUTOMOBILE SPEAKS 

Read at the Automobile Club Dinner in New York, December 20, 

1911. 



JUST look at me ! Just look at me ! 
*** I am the motor-car. Just see ! 
I own the road. I Ve got the whole 
Rolled earth just where it minds my pull. 
The boldest, biggest, big thing yet, 
I 'm here to stay. You won't forget. 

The horse, poor thing, I Ve done him up. 
The farmers use him. Like a pup, 
Some folks still keep him for a pet — 
He is a pretty creature yet — 
But when it comes to being hauled, 
Four legs don't go. That hand is called. 

They say war 's going by the board, 
As arbitration brings accord. 
But while it lasts look out for me, 
For my long suit 's celerity. 
In war be prompt ! My tires may burst 
But still I 'm apt to get there first. 
205 



THE AUTOMOBILE SPEAKS 

In peace — that 's nearly all the time — 
I 'm great beyond the scope of rhyme. 
Commodious, docile, swift and clean, 
I fare on frugal gasolene. 
I 'm never scared, and fast or slow, 
I never eat unless I go. 

They say I have no style. They may ! 
What 's style to me ! I don't eat hay, 
Nor prance. Lugs have for me no lure. 
No powdered wig on my chauffeur ! 
Plain goods, I glide where pride is rife, 
The herald of the simpler life. 

Efficiency 's what I admire. 

I haul the engines to the fire, 

To hospital the injured wight, 

To school the child. By day or night 

I 'm there, and ready. Whirl my crank, 

I 'm off as steady as a bank. 

The roads I Ye built, go out and see ! 
They do come high, but that must be. 
They 're worth it. They and I contrive 
Enlargement for the human hive, 
206 



THE AUTOMOBILE SPEAKS 

Connecting life with where there 's room. 
My ! How we Ve made the country boom ! 

I know some folks still get along 
Without me. Well, that 's not all wrong. 
Trolleys must live and shoe men, too; 
There 's work for all of us to do. 
They say I 'm dear, but that 's not so. 
I 'm cheap, if you can raise the dough. 

Go out and look ! Where do you spy 
A better money's worth than I? 
I 'm a new want, and wants compete 
For what men get. Without conceit, 
I 'm not afraid to make a pass 
At any want that 's in my class. 

For see, I 'm not a thing at all, 

But that which qualifies them all. 

I 'm time, I 'm space, I 'm power, I 'm health, 

And country air and urban wealth, 

Vision, and sport, and rest from strife — 

A length spliced on the span of life. 



207 



FORTITER OCCUPA PORTUM 

Read at the opening of the new Brearley School, November 26, 1912. 

HPHE Brearley School has a grimy face, 

* And the dust lies on its steps, 
And signs "To Let" its walls disgrace 

Like the smudge of the demi-reps. 
No little maids trip in and out, 

No waiting-maids there wait. 
No mothers linger thereabout, 

And say "My child is late !" 

What dregs are these in Brearley 's cup? 

Oh grief ! Oh shame ! Oh sin ! 
" Say, kind policeman, say, what 's up ? 

Is Brearley 's school all in?" 
"Why no! the Brearley hasn't ceased; 

Gone up she has, not down; 
(I miss those kids) moved three blocks East, 

And seventeen up-town ! " 

Hail comely walls, so late begun, 

Tall reared in modest pride, 
All windowed on the rising sun, 

Or on the sailor's guide ! 
208 



FORTITER OCCUPA PORTUM 

Oh joy ! Oh Jay ! Oh white-marked day ! 

Be all with smiles elate, 
That Brearley's will and Croswell's skill 

Have come to such estate ! 

Make bold, oh admirable walls, 

The young ideas you house 
To stand up firm to Fate, her calls, 

And face or man or mouse ! 
The Future's mothers, shape them still, 

Though other plans advance; 
Girls will be girls, be sure they will, 

If they have half a chance ! 

Honor be yours, wise teachers, you 

Who all the maids endow 
With such capacities of view, 

And powers of knowing how, 
Through computation's awful snares 

Their stumbling feet who guide, 
And post them, almost unawares, 

On hosts of things beside! 

Shot through with all that Grecian thought, 
Or Puritan essayed, 
209 



FORTITER OCCUPA PORTUM 

Wise with a wisdom trial-bought 

To lead the aspiring maid, 
A spirit human to the end, 

Uncrampt by learning 's whim, 
Adviser, scholar, teacher, friend, 

The Master, here 's to him ! 

Bright-faced and fair the Brearley School 

Confronts the morning sun, 
Strong in the wise and gentle rule, 

So long ago begun; 
The lively maids its class-rooms fill; 

Anon the handmaids wait; 
And strong she stands in friends' good will. 

Be ever that her state ! 



210 



CHRISTMAS, 1912 

From Life, December 5, 1912. 

|\ yiERRY Christmas, Merry Christmas, 
*- * * To the whole gyrating ball ! 
To Turk and Slav and Jew and Celt 

And Teuton, great and small ! 
To all who dance the turkey trot, 

And all who dance the jig, 
And all who pipe for dancing, both 

The little and the big ! 
Go whirl, go whirl, oh merry orb, 

While some teetotal spin, 
And others in their turns absorb 

Champagne, or even gin ! 
There 's a time for sober thinking, 

There 's a time to throw a fit, 
A time to climb the heights of rhyme — 

My brothers, this is it ! 

Bring on Thomas Fortune Ryan, 
Bring on Thomas Nelson Page, 

And Thomas Woodrow Wilson to 
The forefront of the stage ! 
211 



CHRISTMAS, 1912 

Play, play the Monticello reel, 

Ye bandsmen through your cheers, 
For here 's to Old Virginny, ain't 

She spry for all her years ! 
Go whirl, go whirl, oh, merry sphere ! 

Lo, portents in the sky ! 
When everybody 's turning queer, 

What use is it to cry? 
When everybody 's turning good, 

What can we do but shout? 
What counts is how we feel within; 

Not what we do without. 

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, 

To the sinner and the saint ! 
Do your Christmas shopping early ! 

Mix some red in with your paint! 
Get greens and holly berries, 

And mistletoe the door; 
Send Christmas cards to all the rich, 

And turkeys to the poor ! 
For the aged earth is spinning 

With a quite unusual spin, 
And excuse us, please, for grinning 

At the kind of times we 're in. 
212 



CHRISTMAS, 1912 

Lift the lid up just a trifle, 

Let the inner spirit call 
Merry Christmas ! Merry Christmas ! 

Merry Christmas to us all ! 



213 



TO AN AMBASSADOR 

Read at the dinner of the Publishers of Periodicals to Walter H. Page, 
Ambassador to England, May 8, 1913. 

"It is nip and tuck in these days between the gentlemen who 
make the progressive political periodicals and the gentlemen 
who control the railroads and banks and trusts and their em- 
ployees, to determine who is going to run the country." 

— From The Reflections of a Beginning Husband. 



A CCLAIM the illustrious day, 
'** The double-leaded hour, 
When Page to London sails away 
To represent the ruling power 
Our country's destinies that guides 
And advertises goods besides, 
And thereby hangs a tale. 

Ferocious was the fight; 

The Interests ruled the land 
And held its treasures tight 
In hollows of their hand. 
Despite, or otherwise, the law's intent, 
What thing the Interests agreed on went, 
Nor knew r such word as "fail." 
214 



TO AN AMBASSADOR 

Transpired a little crowd 

All loaded up with noise, 
The Periodicals, that was, 

That grew in power and poise. 
A spreading crowd that swelled and yelled 
And bellowed ever as it swelled 
The Interests to assail. 

It did the Interests up. 

Behold their present fate ! 
Contrition in their cup; 
Indictment on their plate. 
Such helpings as the Law allows 
Cheat on their board the old carouse, 
And leave them sad and pale. 

St. George the dragon slew. 

The English loved him therefore. 
They '11 think a heap of you, 

Our Walter Page, and wherefore? 
Because ambassador you go 
Of us who laid a monster low — 

The Periodicals; Us Periodicals ! 



215 



